In January and February, respectively, on-demand maid services Homeaglow and Helpling announced the first major leap forward for the independent-contractor-based home cleaning service market: giving customers a way to choose the IC cleaner who comes to their home and to review the individual cleaner or team, helping future customers make more informed decisions.
On Monday, Aaron Cheung, the former vice president of growth at Homejoy and the brother of its former CEO Adora Cheung, sent out an email to past Homejoy customers announcing Homeaglow, a new home cleaning service that will feature “only the best cleaners.” The email’s subject line read “Homejoy’s Back! Kind of…” and said that the service would be launching for now in beta. [...] Homeaglow would only be using Homejoy’s best cleaners, or those who maintained a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars or more. Users will also now be able to choose their cleaners, unlike with Homejoy, while cleaners will have the ability to set their own hourly prices. Read the full article.
Helpling today announced their platform will globally migrate to the technology of British subsidiary Hassle.com. Helpling acquired the European pioneer of online home services in July 2015. The new platform will allow customers to browse individual cleaner profiles before booking - strengthening Helpling’s position as a curated online marketplace for cleaners. It also offers cleaners and their customers more features to manage their relationship directly on the platform. For cleaners, it has never been so easy to manage their independent business. The migration has already taken place in France and Germany, with other markets soon to follow. Read the full press release.
In an increasingly technology-based home services marketplace, we've seen lead generations services add review features and even booking and financial transaction options - and vice versa. So it should be no surprise that referral services that began as online booking would also improve and enhance their success by incorporating similar features.
Despite the downfall of concept leader Homejoy to labor misclassification lawsuits, later iterations of the on-demand, independent contractor-based economy cleaning service are thriving and have led to a dramatic increase in online presence, SEO spending, and automated systems adoption among cleaning industry leaders and owners of traditional, private, employee-based cleaning companies.
Over the last 10 years, we've seen a concerted move away from in-home consultations as the primary sales method because it takes so much more time than faster, technology-aided communication methods. It's reasonable to expect that the next 10 years will see a dramatic reduction in phone sales alongside an increase in web- and app-enabled business interactions for sales, customer service, and even hiring and employee management.
FAQs
A: Prioritize systems that improve scheduling, customer communication, payroll accuracy, payments, field visibility, reporting, and consistent execution of documented workflows.
A: It can reduce administrative labor, missed work, payment delays, routing inefficiency, payroll errors, and decision-making based on incomplete data.
A: Evaluate business fit, integrations, data ownership, security, implementation effort, employee usability, reporting, support, and measurable return on investment.
A: Document the workflow, select a system of record, define device and security policies, train employees, test the process, and maintain contingency procedures.
A: No. Technology can enforce and automate a sound process, but it usually magnifies confusion when responsibilities and decision rules are not documented first.
