Strengthening the Shopper-Customer Relationship

Last year, we made a commitment to foster a community built on best intent. This means that we act with consideration and compassion for the Instacart community and ask that shoppers and customers assume the best of us and each other. If things don’t go to plan, we’ll handle the situation with the utmost attention, care, and concern to find the best possible outcome for everyone.

Today, we’re making some updates to further strengthen the relationship between shoppers and customers.

Instilling customer confidence through in-app recognition

We know that Instacart shoppers go above and beyond to find great replacements, select the best produce, and deliver the highest quality of service to customers every day. Today, customers can see limited information about you when you are shopping and delivering their orders, such as your first name and how many batches you’ve shopped. Now, we’re introducing additional shopper details, which enable customers to view highlights of your unique shopping skills, further get to know you, and feel confident that you will shop and deliver their order with care.

Customers will now be able to see valuable information such as:

• How many 5-star ratings you’ve received
• The compliment badges you’ve earned for quality service including good replacements, quality items, helpful chat, and extra effort
• If you have shopped for them before 
• The number of orders you have delivered on time
• And how much time you have saved customers

Providing customers with this information will help showcase your shopping expertise and allow them to get to know you a bit more, fostering a better overall relationship between you and your customer.

Customer visibility into your delivery journey

As always, you get to see the full details of a batch before you accept it — this includes how many customer orders are in the batch and if you will need to shop the orders, deliver them, or both. While you’re aware that sometimes you shop or deliver for more than one customer at once, we heard feedback that it would be helpful to share this information directly with the customer, to avoid any confusion.

We’re making improvements to live delivery status that will give customers access to more information about their order, including if you are shopping or delivering multiple orders. For example, once you have checked out and are on your way to deliver your first order to customer A, customer B will see a message in the app that you are making another delivery first and they will be notified once you’re on your way to customer B. We expect live delivery status improvements to lead to higher ratings and facilitate a more seamless experience for both shoppers and customers.

Upholding our community guidelines

Since making our initial commitment to shoppers to operate with mutual best intent, we have been dedicated to improving shoppers’ ability to provide feedback on their experiences with customers. Last year, we introduced a new batch-level feedback experience for shoppers that enables you to report inappropriate or rude customer behavior. Now, we’re enhancing this feature to ensure inappropriate behavior is quickly addressed, which may include warning or suspending the customer after we receive reports. We’ll send shoppers an email when a customer they’ve reported has received a warning, assuring shoppers that we take their concerns seriously and work quickly to take the appropriate action.

“Shoppers work diligently to deliver a great experience for their customers. We want to help showcase this effort and build products that foster a deeper sense of community and understanding between customers and shoppers,” said John Adams, Vice President of Shopper & Fulfillment Product at Instacart. “We recognize the care that shoppers put into shopping and delivering day in and day out, and are excited to introduce new features that shine a spotlight on that care and attention to detail for all customers to see.”

These product updates are a continuation of the commitments we announced last year to make meaningful improvements to your experience on the Instacart platform. We look forward to building upon these commitments and introducing products that support you and your goals.

Instacart

Author

Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.