Instacart Introduces Tip Protection for Shoppers
Instacart has increased the earning potential for its more than 600,000 shoppers by offering tip protection that will add more reliability to the earnings that they receive.
The company's first-of-its-kind tip protection offering is intended to 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 that shoppers aren't adversely affected. According to the company, having a tip zeroed out after delivery is “exceedingly rare”; nonetheless, it wants to ensure that shoppers are supported in the event that this does happens.
Instacart has also invested in several ways to encourage higher customer tips and make them easier for shoppers to access. For customers who rate their shopper 5 stars, the updated platform will prompt them to consider increasing their tip after checkout to recognize great service. This feature, which rolled out few months ago, resulted in a 6% average increase in shoppers' earnings from tips on eligible orders. Additionally, for customers who select not to leave a tip, the platform encourages them 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.
Shoppers will also be able to cash out their tips just two hours after they deliver an order — speeding up access from the current 24-hour window.
In addition, Instacart is piloting several new batch types to unlock more earning opportunities for shoppers, including multistore batches and in-store add-on orders. Multistore 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're in a grocery store, adding another customer order to the batch that they're 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.
These enhancements are part of Instacart's four-month rollout of new commitments for the shopper community. The company 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.”
"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, VP of shopper and fulfillment product at San Francisco-based 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 currently partners with more than 750 national, regional and local retail brands to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from more than 70,000 stores across more than 5,500 cities in North America. The Instacart Platform offers a suite of enterprise-grade technology products and services to power e-commerce, fulfillment, in-store, ads and insights for retailers across the United States and Canada. Hundreds of retailers partner with Instacart to power their e-commerce experiences across the Instacart App and their own white-label sites and solutions.
