We just recently made some exciting updates to HelpHive! Since we launched HelpHive.com, one of our main focus areas has been trying to capture the word-of-mouth referral activity that occurs amongst friends, family, colleagues and neighbors offline and bring it online.
Well, this week we took a big step to make it even easier for homeowners to setup and find those recommendations from “trusted people” using HelpHive.com. How’s that you say? Read on and see! And if you’re the kind that likes moving pictures, checkout our video (with a catchy background tune) on How HelpHive Works.
1. To Get Personal, We’ll Start by Getting Social!
It begins with your social network. One of the good things about social networks is they capture relationships with many of the people whose recommendations you trust. By connecting HelpHive with Facebook (our current network of choice), we’re able to take recommendations of Home Service Pros from your friends PLUS THEIR FRIENDS and make them easy for you to find on HelpHive.com using the HelpHive Recommendations List. Once connected with Facebook, any HelpHive recommendations of Home Service Pros posted by friends are automatically added to your very own Personal Recommendations List and vice versa. But of course, a picture’s worth a thousand words – and makes for a more interesting blog post, right? So here it is!
2. So, I’ve connected HelpHive with Facebook, What Next?
To get the most out of your Personal Recommendations List, we suggest you start with the following:
- Post your own recommendations of Home Service Pros on HelpHive. It’s easy and only takes a few minutes. Simply search on HelpHive for Home Pros you’d recommend, then write a short review – you’ll include a star rating, some comments about what they did for you, and why they were great! And for doing so, we’ll send you a Thank You – a $10 Starbucks Gift card. Not a bad deal!
- And, since it’s all about recommendations from friends, invite your friends to connect HelpHive with Facebook and post their recommendations too. The more friends you have sharing their reviews and recommendations on HelpHive, the more recommendations you’ll have on your HelpHive Personal Recommendations List!
3. So Where Do I Find My HelpHive Recommendations List?
“We’ve got an app for that!”… Using the HelpHive “Quick Access Bar”, your Personal Recommendations List is just a mouse click away from most pages on HelpHive. The Quick Access Bar shows you how many friends and neighbors are contributing to your Personal Recommendations List as well as how many total recommendations you’ve got. See it below:
And on the Recommendations List, you see the various types of services you’ll find on HelpHive – next to each one is a number… This is the number of recommendations you have for this type of service professional from friends, friends of friends and neighbors. Example time:
- Say I was looking for a Carpet Cleaner… by clicking on the “90 Recommendations for You” button on the Quick Access Bar, I could see that I have 8 recommended carpet & upholstery cleaners…By clicking the “carpet & upholstery cleaners” link, I’d get a list of just those 8 carpet cleaners, and who recommended them.
- And, say I was looking for recommendations of Flooring Contractors (you’ll notice above I have just 1 recommended Flooring Contractor), I could press the “Ask for a Recommendation” button – this would allow me to send a message to my friends on HelpHive with my request for Flooring Contractor recommendations.
So, what about when you’re searching on HelpHive for a home pro – how would you know whether they’ve been recommended by someone you know or not? And what if you were thinking about hiring a particular home pro on HelpHive but had a personal recommendation for a different business that you didn’t even know about? Answers to those questions below!
We’ll use another example: say I needed to have some pruning done. And I found the business above – they’ve got a pretty good rating. Well, look here – this business looks different than others on HelpHive. There’s a purple people box (that means personal recommendations) at the top of the page . In this case it’s a friend of a friend who reviewed this business. So, that might be good enough – maybe I know this person or have heard about them from another friend, so their recommendation is just fine. But if I’d like some other options, I can go to my Quick Access Bar – look at that! It’s showing me that I have 10 Recommendations in the Landscape & Yardwork service category (pretty handy eh?). Clicking on the “10 Recommendations in Landscape & Yardwork” button would result in a list of the 10 recommended businesses, with details about who recommended them.
So, there it is – Personal Recommendations from friends via HelpHive. To get started and create your very own Personal Recommendations List, Login with Facebook on HelpHive.
And as always, if you have feedback on what we can do to make HelpHive better, easier, faster, more useful etc., please let us know.
Happy HelpHivin’!
We’ve been listening to all of your feedback and we’ve been hard at work over the holidays responding to your ideas and suggestions.
HelpHive recently launched a new, innovative fundraising program designed for non-profits including schools and clubs who want to raise up to $1,000.
The past 24 hours have been a full 24 hours as we launched our Paid Plans! Additionally, we announced a partnership with TurnHere, a leading online marketing services company, that provides businesses with a cost effective way to produce high quality, professional video for their businesses. Wait – there’s more! We also, made some substantive user experience improvements to various parts of HelpHive, most notably our call system for handling, tracking, directing, recording and otherwise facilitating connections between homeowners and home service professionals. Read on for details!
FREE Video via TurnHere Partnership
As part of any update we do, we also made a slew of user interface and experience improvements and enhancements… Most notably, we did another deep pass at improving the experience of our call system. Given the importance of the phone in connecting homeowners with home service professionals, we felt it warranted the investment and effort basd on what we learned over the past few months! So, what exactly does this all mean? Well, we greatly improved the direct connect call experience, streamlined menuing and call prompts, moved to a friendlier human vs. computer generated menuing system and much more! And then of course lots of bug fixes and tweaks!
This morning we hosted a roundtable discussion with a group of HelpHive business owner’s. Leading edge businesses who are looking for new and innovative ways to attract new customers…
But stay tuned – it’ll be here soon enough…
Today we’re excited to announce the expansion of HelpHive into 3 new Western Washington counties. A hearty welcome to homeowners and home service businesses in Kitsap, Thurston and Whatcom counties!
