Grooming 2.0

Rover has a small grooming pilot in 4 cities. To expand nationally we needed to change how owners booked care with groomers. At the outset we identified 3 key problems to solve.

1. The existing pilot requires manual work by operations employees, this won’t scale.

2. Groomer availability is an “instant book” model, but we know from research that owners and groomers are very flexible and don’t necessarily need to lock down a time instantly.

3. Owners want to select who their groomer is but in the “instant book” pilot they can only choose a time and only later find out who their groomer is.

By integrating the grooming service into Rover’s core service architecture we solve for most of these problems. However, grooming has unique challenges that require new additions or changes to the existing core service model.

Phase 1: Pick your groomer

On average, it only takes about 4 groomers to service a market. This small amount of selection allows us to give a quick overview of each groomer in a compact format, while allowing for a link to an in-depth profile.

Card states

I created a new compact provider card component to showcase just the essential stats for each groomer. The typical sitter cards used for other services wouldn’t work here due to their verbose nature.

During initial usertesting, users told us that the essential stats were good, but they wanted to drill down into each groomer to see reviews or experience before booking. This was highly important because the groomers will be coming into their home and users wanted to be able to trust the groomer they chose.

Based on this feedback we created a profile preview to show not only reviews and further service details, but also the groomers “about” section so that owners could start to develop a connection with the groomer.

Phase 2: Start a conversation

Our second phase aimed to give owners and groomers more flexibility with booking time and price, and messaging. We opted to move away from Instant-booking and to a request-accept model. An owner can now request a groomer at their chosen time, but the groomer gets to see the details of the booking and chat with the owner before agreeing.

With the new messaging functionality a groomer can ask questions about the pet’s coat condition and find out what the owner is really looking for. Since many grooms are booked well in advance as the date approaches either the groomer or the owner might have a schedule change. Previously they would have to text our customer support line and an employee would have to manually reschedule. Now the groomer will be able to adjust the date and time of the booking even after it was confirmed and paid for. This should cut our CX reschedule tickets from 1000/month down to double digits/month.

Project Details