Overview: 20 / 70 / 10 Ranking System
20/70/10 is how we view our business, customers & providers. We borrowed this thinking from Jack Welch of GE fame, and it’s essentially Pareto’s principle on steroids. It has proven itself over and over again as an effective way to break up and understand all our users.
Why do we think this way?
It helps us separate the noise from the actionable intelligence and design for a brighter future while removing waste that drains our ability to constantly deliver a rising standard. We learn from all our users and this helps us contextualize learning opportunities in real-time. It also helps us filter what is LawnGuru centric and what’s problem user-centric.
LawnGuru is a partnership between our team/technology and our pros – together we are mighty and can consistently do more by focusing on what we each do best. We invest in these partnerships, literally putting our money where our mouth is, and have proved this understanding time and time again.
Partnerships go both ways, if we don’t uphold our end (new sales, instant payments, customer support, and tools to compress your expenses) you won’t stay with us. Conversely, we expect our pros to uphold their end of the deal. 20/70/10 is our rubric for evaluating whether our partnerships are working or not.
Break It Down
Top 20%
The 20 refers to the top 20% of our users, these are the pillars of LawnGuru and are our highest frequency highest quality users. The top 20% represents 57.19% of all activity on LawnGuru.
For customers in this bracket, they book recurring lawn and snow service, order special services and refer all of their friends. 17 of them get discounts on every. single. service. ever. We’re constantly looking to understand their needs and to find more people like them.
For Providers in this bracket, they have drunk the kool-aid and embraced LawnGuru as a pillar of their business. We represent more than half of their entire business by the number of jobs completed and revenue earned. They invest in their customers on LawnGuru and on their own – confident in the knowledge that excellent service pays dividends. The data says it’s true – the top 20%’s customer retention rates are significantly higher.
Providers who are in the top 20% consistently earn more, are the first to access new features, are requested specifically by customers and are spotlighted in our Provider of the Month blog posts. Their story and our story are intertwined, and we are proud to showcase them.
These pros definitely read the provider guide and stay current on changes – if you want to join their ranks, take the first step by making sure you know how our marketplace works.
Middle 70%
The middle 70 are the bulk of our users, and are providers who complete a lot of work but haven’t gone full Guru yet. Many will graduate up, usually halfway through their second season with us (so-far).
The middle 70% is where the bulk of our LawnGuru Providers fall, as a group they tend to stack up really close to our Top 20% on any given metric except jobs completed and revenue earned. These pros, as a whole, do great work consistently but just do less of it.
Bottom 10%
In our experience, we’ve found that the bottom 10% is a great launch pad for improvement! When we tell pros they fell here, we hope they take this as nothing but candid feedback! On the other hand, those who stay in the bottom 10% tend to be the source of most of our customer service issues, refund/coupon expenses, and wasted time and opportunity.
We want to see the bottom 10% rise and are here to help in any way we can. In return we expect that they invest in delivering a transformational experience to each customer they serve. That’s the nature of our partnership and why we’re so excited to help grow our Providers’ businesses!
Occasional Bottom 10% providers get a near-term pass because we believe they can be stars for us in the months ahead. The Bottom 10 to Top 20 switch up happens more than you may think.
Repeat bottom 10% users are short-lived on LawnGuru. Problem providers tend to get banned for policy violations (read the pro guide, seriously) or overwhelming negative feedback. Problem customers get spotted and handled by our customer support team – they don’t usually affect a pro more than once and direct their issues at Guru HQ.
Monthly Reporting Program
At the end of every month we randomly choose a measurable metric and rank all our Pros in each market into the Top 20%, Middle 70% & Bottom 10%. While guessing what a specific month might be is impossible, you can be sure it’ll be stuff like:
- Average response time on messages
- Average time to complete accepted jobs
- Number of late jobs
- Percent of jobs completed in first 24 hours
- Instances of proactive communication
- Customer cancellations or cancel rates
- Average rating earned
- Number of 5-star rankings
- Percent of support tickets
- Number of times requested by customers
While no individual month’s metric embodies a provider’s performance, it’s an effective barometer to see where they stack. The goal is to keep an eye on the real prize: a transformational experience for customers, making them smile and their yards shine.
Now that you get where we stand, we’re sure you’re going to be a rising star if you aren’t already.
Thanks for taking the time to hear us out, we constantly want to say thank you and we’re working on doing it more. If you have any thoughts or feedback, shoot us your thoughts via support@lawnguru.co or talking to our pro team. We’ve got you.