Instacart, a leading retail enablement company in North America, today announced a suite of new product features focused on offering shoppers the ingredients to earn on their terms. As part of these measures, Instacart has developed substantial updates to customer tipping on the platform, including first-of-its-kind tip protection for shoppers which will help increase shopper earnings from tips and add more reliability into the earnings shoppers receive. In addition, Instacart is piloting several new batch types to unlock additional earnings opportunities for shoppers, including multi-store batches and in-store add-on orders.
Instacart’s first-of-its-kind tip protection offering will protect shoppers from customers who remove a tip without reporting an issue with the order. This protection will apply when a customer zeroes out their tip after delivery without reporting an order issue. Instacart will cover the amount of the zeroed-out tip, up to $10, to ensure shoppers are not adversely affected. While having a tip zeroed out after delivery is exceedingly rare, Instacart wants to ensure that shoppers are supported in the event that this happens.
Instacart has also invested in several ways to encourage higher customer tips and make them easier for shoppers to access. Moving forward, shoppers will be able to cash out their tips just two hours after they deliver an order — a decrease from the current 24-hour window — so they can access their earnings even more immediately.
In addition, customers who rate their shopper 5 stars will be prompted to consider increasing their tip after checkout to recognize great service from their shopper. This feature has resulted in a 6% average increase in shoppers’ earnings from tips on eligible orders as it’s been rolled out over the past few months. At checkout, customers who select not to leave a tip are encouraged to add one to recognize their shopper’s hard work. In testing, this feature has resulted in a 12% average reduction in customers choosing not to leave a tip.
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“We strive to equip shoppers with information on the best way to earn, so they can earn what they need, when they need it,” said John Adams, Vice President of Shopper & Fulfillment Product at Instacart. “It’s our job to give shoppers the ingredients to earn on their terms — so they can understand when, where, and how to maximize their earning potential on our platform. With today’s improvements to tipping and batching on the platform, we’re making shopping with Instacart an even more reliable, profitable experience for the more than 600,000 individuals who choose to earn with us.”
Instacart is also developing additional batch types for shoppers to increase their earnings opportunities across the platform. Multi-store batches give shoppers the opportunity to shop from more than one store location in a single batch, maximizing the amount of time they can spend earning. Shoppers can also accept an add-on order while they are in the grocery store, adding another customer order to the batch they are already shopping to maximize their earning potential.
Each of these batch types is currently being piloted in markets across North America, with more work underway to deliver additional opportunities for shoppers who are looking to earn on their terms.
Today’s announcement is the second in Instacart’s four-month rollout of new commitments for the shopper community, following support while you shop and beyond in March. Instacart will continue to deliver new product features related to a community built on best intent and recognition and rewards for the best of the bunch over the next two months.
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