Instacart fine-tunes personal shopper ratings system

Instacart has unveiled a new customer ratings system for its personal shoppers that the company describes as providing a “more helpful, informative and fair experience” for its delivery workforce.

San Francisco-based Instacart said Tuesday that instead of order batches being prioritized according to the highest rating possible, personal shoppers now must uphold a 4.7 average rating or above for batch prioritization. The online delivery giant also noted that it now will forgive more ratings for “reasons that may be outside of a shopper’s control,” such as when certain customers consistently rate shoppers below 5 stars.

Overall, Instacart fields more than 600,000 personal shoppers, who pick, pack and deliver online grocery and other retail orders.

A new 'Your Stats' screen that shows information about a personal shopper’s experience on the platform, including average customer rating, customer feedback and statistics such as the number of orders completed.

“Our reimagined ratings system was developed in close collaboration with the shopper community to better support their needs,” John Adams, vice president of shopper and fulfillment product at Instacart, said in a statement. “It’s incredibly important to us to nurture a community built on best intent — deepening the trust between shoppers, customers and all of us at Instacart.”

Under the new system, Instacart is introducing a “Your Stats” screen that shows information about a shopper’s experience on the platform, including their average customer rating, customer feedback and statistics such as the number of orders completed. A new section in the Shopper app also displays information about a shopper’s batch accuracy, including details about items found and replacements. Instacart noted that a shopper’s accuracy information doesn’t impact on their rating or access to batches.

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Personal shoppers also will now see text in the app alerting them to when they are close enough to a store location to see available batches, Instacart said, adding that location is the chief factor in a shopper’s access to batches. When a shopper enters a store’s designated vicinity, text will appear in the app to notify them that they’re ideally situated and if they can expect to see batches from that retail location in the near future, the company explained. The app also may show other recommended store locations nearby with higher batch availability, in case they would prefer to move to another close-by store.

Instacart, too, said it now will solicit batch-level feedback after each batch shoppers complete. For example, shoppers can share if they had an issue with a customer and would no longer like to be paired with them moving forward. And if shoppers report rude customers, they will have the option to block those customers from their list of batches going forward, the company noted.

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“By delivering on shopper feedback to make the customer ratings system even more fair, accurate, and reliable, we’re taking another step in ensuring that shoppers feel heard and supported through their experience,” Adams added.

Instacart partners with more than 750 national, regional and local retailers in North America and provides online shopping, delivery and pickup from more than 70,000 stores in over 5,500 cities. The company’s services reach more than 85% of U.S. households and about 90% of Canadian households.