Have you been fiddling with the idea of tapping the burgeoning on-demand home services space?
If yes, then it’s time to give more food to your thought, because the demand for such services has been on a continuous rise and is expected to take a stronger grip in future.
Analysts forecast the global on demand home services market to grow at a CAGR of around 49% during the period 2017-2021, and this indicates a positive growth sign.
However, at present, the market is mostly fragmented, with the presence of many small players offering a variety of services such as house cleaning, repairs, interior design, plumbing, flooring, storage, and many more.
The concept of calling over experts to take care of your small jobs at home by simply tapping the mobile phone has clicked really well with the tech-savvy generation and has therefore triggered the interest of many start-ups to join the bandwagon and flood the not-so-flooded home services space.
However, before you take the big leap, consider the following important areas in order to ensure success:
Understand what the customer wants
Understand the consumer’s requirement and what he/ she is exactly looking for. Do not make guesses or assumptions, and do not offer something which people do not want or have not asked for. Integrate a feature in the app, wherein the customer could post his requirement in detail and the kind of service he would like to avail.
In case the requirement is not clear, more details could be extracted by calling the customer directly and suitable professionals could then be designated to perform the task.
Maintain a wide pool of service professionals
Make sure that there are enough service people in your network so that any variation in demand that might arise could be matched.
For example, in case the demand for an electrician comes from 10 households together at the same time, and if there is no availability of so many experts, you would either have to schedule the appointments according to your convenience or perhaps decline the request. In both cases, your brand-building exercise might suffer.
Check credentials of service staff
Due to an increasing number of incidents like thefts, burglary, murders, etc, people have become extremely cautious about allowing strangers to visit their place. Building a safe and secure service staff, therefore, has to be the priority of your start-up.
Establish a strong process of screening and verification of all these professionals before you register them on to your platform. You could also use the services of professional companies, which specialize in the task of background verification. Moreover, a safety alert feature could also be embedded in the app, through which the customers could raise their concern in case of anything suspicious.
Enable multiple service bookings at one go
Let’s look at this – someone is trying to move into a new place and requires help with a lot of small tasks - plumbing, house set-up, electrical fittings, etc. If there is a single platform that allows customers to call for all these services together, you are offering them a lot of conveniences, and that is exactly the victory point.
Therefore, make sure that the app allows the consumer to request for various useful services at the same time.
Ask for ratings and reviews
Customer feedback is important for the growth of any business. Therefore, make sure you include the ratings and reviews section in the app, where one could easily scribble a few lines about the service used.
As a new player, the insights would help you improve your offerings more and also gain consumer trust.
So, put an end to your wait! It is time to give wings to your idea and get in touch with the right experts who could design the most creative on-demand home services app for your start-up!
