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Text-a-Pro — Book home projects at flat-rate prices over text & Messenger
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@kikischirr We chose texting because of its convenience, simplicity, and instantaneous nature. Research shows that texting is the most widely used feature by 98 percent of mobile customers in the United States. You can get a project started simply by sending us a text at 776-776 while you are waiting in line or eating lunch, and one of our Home Project Manager will work with you to get your project scheduled. No phone tag :)
We ran some pilots over last the few months and found that more than 150,000 text messages were exchanged between Pro.com customers, Pros and Home Project Managers indicating that texting is a desirable medium for customers to schedule home projects.
Hey @ecwilson - what if you have a multi-step process like moving a Dryer outlet to another room? How do you handle that estimate?
@grmeyer Hey Greg, that's a good example of a service that's difficult to bound. For those, we'll usually give a pre-estimate (an approximate price range based on jobs in your area) and then connect you directly with the pro by text.
What if your project is hard to describe? Or it's more advanced like a broken AC unit? Can you handle that?
@startupjoshua The beautiful thing about messaging is sending a photo is so easy and natural compared to a website. A pic is worth a thousand words when you're working with contractors. If it turns out what you need is hard to bound (as is often the case with misc repairs) we'll usually schedule you for an estimate and then immediately connect you directly over text message with a pro so they can diagnose.
@ecwilson @startupjoshua Ah, scheduling an estimate and direct connection makes sense. I agree, a pic is worth a thousand words if it can describe your problem. Cool product! Hope you can get to geographic expansion soon.
@startupjoshua Thanks! We'll be expanding pretty rapidly so it shouldn't be too long.
@sgzhaohang Hi Hang, Text-a-Pro is currently live in Seattle and SF. We will be expanding to other cities nationwide soon.
@sgzhaohang During onboarding, we run local Pros through our certification program and ensure that they are licensed, insured, and background-checked.
Thanks Violeta. We are fans of the Product Hunt community. We are offering an exclusive for Product Hunt users. First 300 users from Product Hunt who use Text-a-Pro service and send the code PRODUCTHUNT to 776-776 or to Pro.com on Facebook Messenger will get a $25 credit towards their first home service project ranging from house cleaning to handyman services to wall mounting a TV. You can read more about our service on our blog here - https://pro.com/blog/text/
@dreunlimited @sydney_liu_sl Facebook has been a very easy partner to integrate with... While similar to SMS/MMS today, in the future it will offer way more. Imagine highly structured/interactive messaging (tap to pay, tap to choose a time, etc).
Hi @kikischirr We chose texting because of its convenience, simplicity, and instantaneous nature. Research shows that texting is the most widely used feature by 98 percent of mobile customers in the United States. You can get a project started simply by sending us a text at 776-776 while you are waiting in line or eating lunch, and one of our Home Project Manager will work with you to get your project scheduled. No phone tag :)
We ran some pilots over last the few months and found that more than 150,000 text messages were exchanged between Pro.com customers, Pros and Home Project Managers indicating that texting is a desirable medium for customers to schedule home projects.
This is cool! I haven't seen many products use Facebook Messenger. How has that been?
@ehlemiv We’ve built a lot of tech behind the scenes for this – including generating dynamic images at run-time for things like personalized estimates and pro recommendations. Our pricing engine is built on a canonical home project catalog and generates personalized prices based on your location and project description. We use Twilio for messaging.
@ehlemiv We're about 60 large, maybe 40% of which is product, 20% customer service, 20% sales, and 20% ops. It's surprising how much goes into building an experience like this on all fronts...
Hi @courtneyklo, we built the most comprehensive pricing engine to provide pre-estimates of how much a home project will cost, and now we have taken it one step further by pre-negotiating prices with our trusted local service professionals to provide flat-rate prices on hundreds of common home improvement projects. These projects range from window cleaning to smart thermostat installation to hanging a flat-panel TV. We found that a lot of customers are wary of hidden fees associated with home projects and by offering flat-prices upfront, we are bringing forth even more transparency for our customers. Let me know if you have any more questions on it. Thanks.
WeKiki