Providing a Fair & Reliable Experience for Shoppers

We’re always seeking to make the shopper experience the best it can be. We’ve heard from shoppers time and again that flexibility continues to be what draws you to the Instacart platform — in fact, a recent survey of the shopper community found that more than 85% of shoppers list flexibility as the main reason they choose to shop with Instacart.

We know that fundamental to this flexibility is having reliable access to batches, letting you shop whenever and wherever is best for your schedule. Over time, we’ve been closely evaluating how best to ensure shoppers can reliably access batches in a way that is fair and achievable.

As we look to deliver a great experience for shoppers, we’ve heard feedback that the current system for accessing batches could be improved. Today, we want to share a few next steps we have planned to reevaluate this system and ensure we’re delivering on our promise to provide a consistently fair and reliable experience for shoppers.

The current state: how shoppers access batches

Today, shoppers see batches based on a range of factors, including current location, eligibility such as alcohol or prescription certification, timeliness, the amount of batches you’ve shopped, and more. Customer rating is also a factor, with the highest rated shoppers viewing batches first.

We also have several measures in place to ensure that customer ratings are fair and accurate, including automatically forgiving a shopper’s lowest rating and any additional ratings that are outside of shoppers’ control. In addition, reported order issues don’t impact a shopper’s rating, and customers have to leave feedback when they rate a shopper below 5 stars. We want to ensure that shoppers are not unfairly rated for reasons outside of your control, or that one low rating doesn’t impact your overall average.

Despite these measures, we know that a more comprehensive look at all aspects of being a shopper — not just customer rating — is important to understand the fuller picture. In the coming months, we’re going to be working directly with shoppers to understand what system is most preferred for all of you.

Learning from the shopper community

To make sure we’re listening closely to shoppers, we have a few plans to gather your feedback and hear directly from our shopper community:

• Shopper survey: We’ll be issuing a survey for all full-service shoppers to gather your feedback about the current ratings system, how ratings impact your access to batches, and what could improve. This survey will be crucial in understanding the perspective of all shoppers, so we hope you’ll consider taking the time to fill it out.
• Shopper listening tour: We’re reaching out to select shoppers across North America for a more in-depth feedback session to understand specific experiences related to access to batches and what could improve. These shoppers will receive an email with more information later this week.

The future of access to batches

As we learn from shoppers to reimagine how this system will evolve, we’ll be communicating directly with shoppers with any significant updates regarding how you access batches. No changes are being made yet, but we want to be clear with you all that we’re working on improving this system and partnering directly with shoppers to build the future iteration.

There may be small pilots and adjustments in the coming months as we work to discover the best possible approach for the long-term. Thank you for being a part of the shopper community.

Instacart

Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.