Home Truths: Home service is just a click away

Waiting long hours for a plumber to fix the leak in your overhead tank may be a thing of the past!

Thanks to the advent of home services marketplace, plumbing, carpentry and home cleaning are just a click/tap way.

There are quite a few portals/apps that provide home services; prominent ones include Timesaverz, Urbanclap, Onetimejobs, Easyfix.in, ServiceBELL and Taskbob.

The product offering varies across players. Most of them have positioned themselves as a horizontal platform catering to a variety of services. In fact, a few have spread themselves beyond just handyman services.

Urbanclap, for instance, provides services, ranging from wedding photography, beauticians, yoga tutors and interior designers to professionals such as chartered accountants through the app/platform.

Timesaverz has expanded into areas such as home cleaning, beauty, laundry and pest control besides handyman services.

Likewise, ServiceBELL, besides handyman services, provide travel-related assistance such as passport, visa, financial products, such as insurance and loans.

Onetimejobs caters to specialised requirements such as security and background verification besides the regular handyman services; in all, they provide around 72 services.

But there a few vertical platforms that are focussed on a particular line of service. Easyfix is one such.

The platform currently offers only home repair and maintenance service — plumbers, electricians and carpenters.

And the focus is largely on the institutional segment, though it caters to retail customers too.

Currently, most of these players offer services in tier-1 cities.

Timesaverz, for instance, offers these services across six cities — Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Gurgaon and Delhi.

Likewise, Urbanclap caters to the needs of customers in seven cities — Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi/NCR, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.

How is it different from engaging a standalone service provider? Well, the benefits of going through these marketplace portals are four-fold.

First, these portals/apps claim that the required service is rendered within the shortest time possible.

According to Urbanclap’s co-founder Abhiraj Bhal, the average time to send the service provider to the customer’s place ranges between 75 and 90 minutes from the time of booking, for instant services.

Major Prashant Rai, founder and CEO of Onetimejobs, asserts that the pre-service call to the customer happens within 30 minutes of registration.

Second, these platforms come in handy for late night emergencies. For instance, Onetimejobs currently offers round-the-clock emergency services — plumbing and electricity, in Bengaluru on a trial basis.

This, of course, comes at a premium to the normal service fee. Easyfix also offers emergency late night services — between 8 pm and 8 am. If your water tank motor stops functioning, you need not wait until morning to get it fixed; you can get late night services offered by Easyfix for an additional flat fee of ₹500, besides 20 per cent extra on the regular service fee.

For those that are planned in advance, most service providers offer multiple slots from which the customer can choose a slot. Quality and rating

Three, most portals claim to verify the identity and educational qualification, assess professional competence and get a police verification done before listing.

Besides, there are checks such as customer ratings to weed out the inefficient ones to ensure consistent service quality.

And the service opportunity is linked to the rating — higher the rating, more business for these service providers.

Four, most portals also list the service fee for various services. This helps you compare them across portals before zeroing in on one. These portals/apps also offer discounts to regular customers and reference fee to build loyalty and retain customers. But, do these benefits come at a cost?

A few marketplace portals have priced these services at a marginal premium to the price you would be paying if you engage these service providers outside of the portal.

But a select few portals actually claim to be offering these services at a cheaper rate than the fee chargeable outside the portal.

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