Shopper Experience Council: Meet Our Committee Members
In June, we hosted our first Shopper Experience Council meet-up at Instacart’s headquarters in San Francisco. We had a productive two days bringing the Shopper community closer to our Instacart teams and we came away with a renewed focus on how we can do more to improve the experience for the tens of thousands of dedicated Shoppers.
An important part of the Shopper Experience Council is getting their valuable feedback to help guide the strategic direction of our product and operations teams. Each member of the Council has a unique point of view which we’re relying on as a part of our decision making process to improve the Shopper experience. The Council is divided into five committees and each of them consistently meets with Instacart’s leadership to give us their perspective on a range of important topics. Their insights have influenced our product development and helped to prioritize changes that will have the greatest impact and are most important to the broader Shopper community.
The committees represent the most important themes we’re focused on improving for our Shoppers, they include: (1) Shopper Earnings (2) Access to Work (3) Shopping & Fulfillment (4) Support & (5) Communications & Community. We wanted to introduce these committees and provide an update on the feedback we’re hearing from each one.
The Earnings Committee
As many of you know, we recently launched a small, new earnings pilot in Boulder, Colorado to get local feedback from the Shopper community before rolling it out to additional markets. For those of you in the Boulder area, thanks for all the feedback you’ve shared with us. We’re hearing that Shoppers appreciate getting more information in advance of accepting a batch, including the size of the order, the items included, as well as the total driving distance, but some Shoppers continue to express that payment for some small batches needs to be improved. Whether it’s batch to batch or month to month, we’ve heard that Shoppers value consistency and predictability overall when it comes earnings.
In terms of next steps, we’re going to continue slowly testing the new earnings model in additional markets, with a heavy focus on collecting feedback along the way and modifying batch incentives to ensure fair and consistent pay for all batches.
The Access to Work Committee
Our current system allows Shoppers who provide the greatest number of hours in previous weeks with early access to hours. One of the hottest topics at the initial Shopper Experience Council kickoff was that Shoppers want to be fast while delivering a high quality service for customers, but this isn’t always an easy balance for Shoppers, who sometimes feel pressure to focus more on speed than anything else. In order to improve the current Early Access system, the Access to Work Committee is helping us focus on creating more opportunities for the best Shoppers to provide services on the Platform.
Meanwhile, with feedback and guidance from the Council, we recently updated the current Early Access system to allow our Shoppers to set inactive days and help Shoppers better manage and plan the days they don’t want to work without impacting their Early Access status.
In terms of next steps, as a team, we want to work with Shoppers to reorient access to work around overall customer experience, including quality of replacements and shopping complete orders, and we’re committed to developing ratings and metrics to more accurately measure and reward quality in addition to speed. This balance is important to get right and we appreciate the ongoing feedback from the Access to Work Committee — and the broader Shopper Experience Council — on this topic.
Shopping & Fulfillment Committee
One key question explored during the Shopping & Fulfillment Committee this month was: “How can we make it easier for Shoppers to complete orders?” This Council has provided us valuable feedback about locating, scanning and weighing items, as well as some novel suggestions for ways to improve communication with customers, like creating customizable templates for some commonly used questions or suggestions. Jasmin, from Chicago, mentioned that she’s created some of her own custom autocorrect phrases on her phone to help her communicate better and more efficiently, and we’re exploring ways of enabling Shoppers to have more meaningful, reliable and effective communication with customers.
The Council has already made some exciting contributions that make life easier for all Shoppers. Based on feedback from the Council we’ve improved our ability to identify instances of overfill in certain staging areas, and have been able to significantly reduce these capacity challenges, making the pickup process much easier for drivers and substantially reducing driver wait times. The Council also helped us identify (and fix) an issue that caused some Shoppers to have to double-scan items.
In terms of next steps, we’re continuing to work with our retail partners to strengthen store by store inventory management and location accuracy and simplifying the in-store experience, from picking through checkout.
“It takes passion to create something special like Instacart and huge amounts of compassion to ensure it runs better for the thousands of Shoppers who hope to have their voices heard through the Shopper Experience Council.” — Gerald, Council participant from Miami, FL
The Support Committee
Across the board, it’s clear that Shoppers want quick resolutions to problems and we agree that our support teams should be more plugged in to local conditions to better understand and address issues that pop up unexpectedly like traffic and parking, power outages, and changes to store or department hours. These issues make shopping more complicated and warrant knowledgeable, real-time support. Teresa, from Albuquerque, described an issue with her payment card not working at a certain store. Rather than resolving this issue on the spot, the challenge of paying at this store impacted her, as well as some additional Shoppers, until it was subsequently fixed. We know that we can be more responsive and helpful, especially when Shoppers are providing us with valuable information from the stores in which they are shopping.
In terms of next steps, as you may have read, we are investing an incredible amount of time and money in improving the Shopper experience and quality infrastructure through a new facility based in Atlanta, Georgia. We’re hiring hundreds of additional full time employees who will be specifically focused on providing fast and high quality support to Shoppers, and we’re already training these teams to address the issues most regularly, and most significantly, impacting Shoppers. This investment in our technology, tools and teams will allow us to improve responsiveness and better integrate Shopper support with what Shoppers are facing locally. We’re excited to share more details about the progress we’re making in the coming months!
The Communications & Community Committee
Shoppers want more communication around big changes happening in all of the above areas, and more detailed information on how to become more successful on the platform. The Council expressed that some communication coming from Instacart should be more detailed, offer more context, or provide specific details to help Shoppers who want to improve. With respect to new Shoppers, Michael, from Philadelphia, expressed that some Shoppers simply don’t know enough about the Instacart platform and how to succeed, and have come to rely on informal local or online networks to gather information.
In terms of next steps, the Council is continuing to share direct feedback in regular committee meetings as we open up new channels for listening and communicating directly with Shoppers. The Council will also be exploring new forums for Instacart to communicate important information to Shoppers, as well as ways of leveraging local communities to help Shoppers get the information they need to be most successful.
“Shoppers should know that major changes are in flight at HQ. At times, it may seem to Shoppers like no progress is being made, which can be frustrating. It’s great to be able to reassure the Shopper community that Instacart understands Shoppers’ challenges, and is attacking them as effectively as possible with help from the Shopper Experience Council.” — Brian, Council participant from Louisville, KY
Over the course of the next month, the Council will continue to focus its efforts on the highest impact areas affecting Shoppers. If you have any suggestions to help guide their efforts or want to share your own thoughts, please let them know.
