Porch
With the focus on the connection between the professional and homeowner, Porch provides leads for the professionals and and qualified local home improvement contractors to homeowners. Having information on 3.8 million home improvement professionals and 140 million projects across the United States, Porch can support these connection and drive them forward.
My time spent at Porch, I helped drive this viewpoint with work on both side of this story. Organizing and bringing up the information that the professional needed and the ability for homeowners to track their home.
The homeowner
At the time I was with porch they offered a report on homes and neighborhood. Homeowners can enter their current home's address to claim their Home and Neighborhood Report. The report includes a history of home improvement projects done on the property, statistics on value, size, age, etc. of neighborhood houses, and a summary of projects done in the neighborhood.
The homeowner, no only had access to existing information about their house but they can also add to it. As the homeowner renovated and updated their house, they have the option to add that project to their home report. By doing so not only keeps track of the house improvements but it also allows porch to give you an estimated value of your house after the upgrade.
The professional
On the contractor's side, there are many of projects to keep track of and they must constantly interact with potential customers for leads on new work. With the professional dashboard, the contractor can track the number of visits to his profile, His past customers and his competition.
The connection
The conversation between the homeowner and the professional needed to be seamless and easy. This was a problem because of the use of older technology, the phone, particularly from the professional’s side. Many modern day professional still heavily rely on the phone.
The interaction below, allowed the professional to reply via SMS or email and continue to interact with their chosen communications method without showing the difference to the homeowner’s perspective. This helped the professional to keep a record of their interactions with a customer in one place.