We’re constantly working on improving our service to make it the best experience for both customers and shoppers. Over the past few months, we’ve learned a lot from the feedback that we’ve gotten from shoppers on our platform. Through these conversations, we’ve heard some common requests, including:
- More consistent pay with fewer variables
- More pay for busy days
- More consistent hours on a week-over-week basis
- Greater visibility into weekly pay
Today we’re excited to announce four changes based on this feedback to improve the shopper experience:
Higher guaranteed delivery commissions: Previously, shoppers were paid a very low guaranteed amount per delivery, while most of their compensation came from tips. While this was good in some cases, in many cases, shoppers felt undercompensated. In fact, over 20% of orders had zero tip amounts, which resulted in a bad experience for shoppers. In order to reduce this variability, we are moving to a significantly higher per-delivery commission and no longer basing shopper compensation on tips. This way, we can remove inconsistencies caused by small or zero tip amounts and ensure more consistent pay for every delivery completed.
On the customer side of things, instead of a tip, customers will have the option to pay a variable service amount. The customer can choose the amount, exactly the same way they did before for tips. The difference is that 100% of the variable service amount is used to pay all shoppers more consistently for each and every delivery, not just the last shopper to touch the order.
More pay on the busiest days: We know that busy days are the most challenging to shop. So, in order to encourage more shoppers to shop during those days, we will also offer a higher per delivery commission during those days.
More flexibility when choosing hours to work: Our new, redesigned shopper app allows shoppers to pick the hours they’d like to work at the beginning of the week, in a system that is much simpler and faster to use than the previous system.
Greater visibility into shopper weekly earnings: Now that we have a guaranteed delivery commission, shoppers will have far more visibility into their earnings. The new app now displays projected weekly earnings as shoppers pick hours, which helps shoppers understand what they will make before the week even starts.
While these are just a handful of improvements, there are many more to come as we continue to listen to our shoppers. Please continue to send us your feedback at shoppers@instacart.com.