Good Guys partner with Airtasker

JULY 12, 2016
THE AUSTRALIAN
Online retailer Kogan.com’s debut on the Australian Securities Exchange may have failed to excite investors but another IPO hopeful, The Good Guys, is pushing ahead with an innovation agenda that it hopes will catch the eye of the market.
The household appliance retailer has partnered with local services marketplace Airtasker to put into action what it says is the next phase of the ‘‘bricks and clicks’’ model.
The Good Guys chief marketing officer, Robert Ambler-Frazer, said that as traditional vendors strove to improve their offerings, the emphasis needed to move beyond simple transaction to the post-purchase experience. Post-purchase offerings have come into focus, with retailers like Amazon rolling out same-day deliveries and other home services across the US.
The partnership with Airtasker is designed to deliver a single platform that allows The Good Guys to leverage its brand and provide a host of services to its customers through its extensive contractor network.
Customers are now directly connected to the full network of The Good Guys’ experienced installers and are able to track and co-ordinate their service at the click of a button, manage variations to their job, access any required certificates once the job is complete and rate their experience.
The solution, which rolled out across The Good Guys store network in June, also streamlines payments for installers and generates full reporting dashboards to give installers access to all of the information they need, whenever they need it. “We want our customers to be connected to us while they are in-between purchases. It’s our mission statement and it opens the path to whole new revenue streams that someone like Kogan.com just doesn’t have,” Mr Ambler-Frazer said.
He said that the platform, run in conjunction with Airtasker, allowed the retailer to fully harness its installer base.
“Harvey Norman has licensed out its service offering but we are the first to have a nationally aggregated platform.”
The platform also allows customers have an opportunity to rate their experience and leave feedback for the installer, creating a valuable data pool for The Good Guys to pick up cues from its customers.
“We have always had a lot of services but we have now managed to bring it all under one roof and can now look beyond selling,” Mr Ambler-Frazer said.
The retailer, which is in the sights of rival JB Hi-Fi, is looking to list on the ASX later this year, with the IPO expected to be priced between $800 million and $1 billion. With an annual turnover of about $2bn and a network of about 100 stores, the chain is now fully controlled by chairman Andrew Muir and family.
Airtasker co-founder and chief operating officer Jonathan Lui, who spearheaded the development of the platform, said that prior to its deployment The Good Guys didn’t have a centralised overview of the services provided.
“This is about delivering visibility. We have built the platform and the Good Guys have the brand and the customers,” Mr Lui said. “This is an Australian first, and we’re expecting it to trigger a fundamental shift in how retailers think about the post-purchase customer experience. It will revolutionise their installation services by streamlining the process,” he said.
He added that The Good Guys’ partnership showcases Airtasker’s expertise in building online marketplaces, and scaling that to other industry verticals.