Home Services Booking App

Every booking depended on a phone call and a string of text messages. The company connects Austin homeowners with independent cleaners, plumbers, electricians and handymen, and it ran the whole business through a web form, a phone line and the dispatch team’s personal phones.

Prices were quoted case by case. Each job was offered to pros one text at a time until someone said yes. Customers rarely knew when the pro would arrive, and pros were paid by check every two weeks. When a pro didn’t show or a customer disputed what had been agreed, there was no record to settle it.

We rode along with cleaners, plumbers and electricians, and sat with the dispatch team through busy days.

• Customers wanted a price before they booked. A quote by text the next day lost the job.
• Pros wanted full schedules and fast pay. Their loyalty went to whichever platform kept them busy and paid quickest.
• Trust had to run both ways. Customers were letting strangers into their homes, and pros were driving to strangers’ addresses.
• Dispatch was the bottleneck. Every job passed through a few people’s phones.

Customers book in the app on iPhone and Android, or on the website, in a few taps. They choose a service and answer a few questions, and see the price before they book:

• cleaning is priced by bedrooms, bathrooms and extras such as inside the oven, inside the fridge or windows;
• handyman jobs are priced by task and time;
• plumbing and electrical repairs are booked as a visit with a set call-out price, and the pro quotes the work in the app before starting.

Customers pick a time slot and can make cleanings recurring, weekly, every other week or monthly, at a lower price per visit and with the same cleaner where possible.

When a booking comes in, the job is offered to pros who cover that zip code and service and are free at that time, with the best-rated first. The first to accept takes the job, and the customer sees who is coming, with their photo and rating. If nobody accepts in time, the job appears on the dispatch board for the team to place by hand.

Before a pro can accept a single job, they pass the company’s checks:

• identity, and proof of liability insurance;
• a valid Texas trade licence for plumbers and electricians;
• a background check through a specialist provider, with the pro’s consent.

After every job, customers and pros rate each other. Pros whose ratings fall are reviewed, and customers who behave badly can be refused.

Pros run their work from their own app. They see job offers, their schedule, directions to each address, a checklist for each job, and before-and-after photos that protect both sides in a dispute. Calls and texts between customers and pros go through masked numbers, so neither side sees the other’s real number.

The customer’s card is saved when they book and charged when the job is marked complete. Payments run through Stripe Connect: the company keeps its fee, and each pro’s earnings are paid out to their bank account automatically, instead of by check every two weeks. At year end, pros receive the tax forms they need.

The team runs the marketplace from one dispatch board. It shows every job of the day on a map, flags jobs nobody has accepted, and handles reschedules, refunds and disputes with the job’s photos, messages and history in one place. New services and zip codes are switched on from the same board as the company grows.

The platform runs on Laravel and MySQL, with Redis for job offers and live status, and an AngularJS dispatch board and website. The pro and customer apps are native: Java on Android and Swift on iPhone. Stripe Connect handles payments and payouts, Twilio provides masked calling and texts, Google Maps powers addresses, service areas and directions, and everything runs on AWS.

Pros were onboarded onto the app first, so there were checked pros ready in every zip code on the day customers could book.

Customers book in a few taps, with the price upfront and the pro’s arrival on their phone. Pros fill their schedules from the app and are paid automatically after every job, every pro is checked before their first job, and the team runs the marketplace from one board instead of a stream of text messages.