For millions of homes across North America, Instacart is a source of food and comfort — it’s more than just a marketplace, it’s a helpful hand and gives time back to our valued customers. As an extension of people’s households, we believe we should maintain consistently high-quality — whether it’s selecting perfectly ripe avocados for tonight’s guacamole or finding every ingredient for the family casserole. Our customers depend on Instacart shoppers to pick their groceries as well or better than they would themselves.

Each day, thousands of shoppers play a special role in making sure busy professionals and families have their everyday essentials and fresh groceries. At Instacart, it’s our job to set you up for success by providing the resources, support, and tools to help you provide exceptional customer service. In 2019, we’re making quality our #1 focus for customers and will be launching a Quality First shopper campaign with new tools and improvements designed to help us get better with every order together.

As part of our focus on quality, we are investing in changes to improve every step of customers’ orders — before, during, and after delivery. As part of our early efforts around quality, we’ve analyzed millions of orders and talked to shoppers and customers about what makes an excellent order. Our new Quality First shopper campaign will focus on four key attributes of excellent orders: finding items; picking, packing and delivering intact; making great replacements; and communicating with customers.

Here’s what we’ve learned about each and how we plan to think about putting quality first in 2019:

Finding Items

One of the most important things we can do for a customer sounds simple, but it’s actually very difficult to do — we have to deliver the goods. We understand that finding all the items in a store can be out of your control — whether it’s out of stock, located in a new section of the store, or out of season. At the end of the order, customers expect to receive every item they ask for and, as a team, we want to do everything in our power to find their requested items or a suitable replacement. In the coming weeks, we’ll begin experimenting with new ways to help shoppers locate items faster and track down those tough-to-find products. We’ll ask the savvy community of shoppers to share location information with photos and tips for hard-to-find items. Future shoppers looking for that item in the same store will be given a location hint and the ability to upvote or downvote the tip based on its accuracy.

Here’s an example of how the feature could work — when you locate a tough-to-find item, we’ll ask you to share the location with fellow shoppers.

When a hint from a fellow shopper is available for your store, it will appear on the shopping list and product detail page — you’ll be able to review a photo, a shopper note, aisle information, who shared the hint, and when.

Pick, Pack & Deliver Intact

Instacart shoppers are pros when it comes to picking, packing, and delivering groceries. Whether it’s avoiding blemishes on produce or storing items at the right temperature, shoppers know what it takes to get customers the groceries they want. This year we’ll be investing in new tools to help broaden your shopping expertise and share best practices within the community. We’ll be starting small, testing new learning programs that are tailored to Instacart shoppers and easy to access when you’re on the go.

Making Great Replacements

Whether an item is out of stock or there’s only one carton of blueberries left, we strive to suggest and offer the best possible replacement so customers don’t have to return to the store. In the last few months, we’ve begun notifying customers of potential out of stock items and asking ahead for their preferred alternatives. This feature allows customers to select their preferences before you begin shopping and gives us a much higher likelihood that the items shoppers deliver will meet their expectations. Over the course of this year, we will continue to make updates to anticipate customers needs in a way that helps you shop smarter — like getting more customer choice replacements that are pre-approved as the best substitution.

Customer Communication

One of the most unique aspects of Instacart is the personal touch shoppers bring to customers’ orders. Customers love when shoppers introduce themselves at the beginning of the shop — it lets them know a person is carefully selecting and gathering their household needs. The introduction also allows customers and shoppers to interact throughout the shop — making it easier to offer recommendations when items are out of stock and removing any guesswork from the experience. In the coming months, we’ll be experimenting with new in-app chat features for shoppers. This will be a first step towards making it easier to get in touch with customers, enable seamless communication with the touch of a button, and help you stay focused on your shop.

Our team is very excited to formally launch our Quality First shopper campaign alongside these improvements very soon. Stay tuned for more updates as these new tools and features become available in your region. In the meantime, we’ll continue listening and working closely with shoppers on each effort, every step of the way.

David Hahn

Instacart Chief Product Officer