A message from our CEO, Mathew Prior

[Mathew-CEO]

Hi,

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful start to the year. As April rounds off to a close, I wanted to check in with you and share a bit of good news from us here at Team Trusted.

Firstly, I’d like to start by sharing a bit about our vision: to become the world’s most loved travel solution for pet people. As a TrustedHousesitters member, you’ve made an incredible choice to be a part of our global community and a worldwide movement based on trust and kindness. We believe that you are enabling a huge shift in the happiness of pets, peace of mind for pet parents and travel experience of pet lovers worldwide.

I’m delighted to share that - with over 160,000 members - our community is now the biggest it’s ever been, with over 50,000 sits already confirmed this year. As we grow and become more prevalent in the minds of pet lovers, so do the opportunities for our members. As a result of this scale, and thanks to some of the great work done by our team, we’re now seeing record numbers of: sits being posted, owners finding the perfect sitter, and sitters confirming a sit. Just incredible!

Of course, none of this would be possible if not for you: our members. We know just how powerful word of mouth is - especially when it comes to entrusting someone with your home and furry friends. Because of your incredible advocacy, 2 out of 3 new members today come to us on the recommendation of a friend or family member. So, thank you for spreading the word of TrustedHousesitters with your friends, family, and those you meet on your travels.

Friends will get 25% off their membership fee, and you’ll get two free months for every friend that joins … More Here

Another area I’m delighted to see growing is our community forum. Since its launch in 2021, the forum has continued to increase in both membership and engagement and recently hit an incredible milestone: over 10,000 members! As well as a great place for our members to connect and chat online, this year the forum has been a brilliant vehicle for our members to share their feedback, thoughts, and suggestions. We’ve been listening, and I’m delighted to share some exciting updates that have recently gone live, as well as some planned work to help improve our platform:

Once the revamp of the review system is complete, we’ll be looking at further initiatives and priorities highlighted by our members, to improve your experience.

Finally, I’ve been delighted to see the many member meet-ups happening all around the world. So far this year, there have been 30 meet-ups across the UK, US, Australia, and Canada (although in reality, probably many more!) and we have all loved seeing our members connect from afar, brought together through TrustedHousesitters and their mutual love of pets and unique travel experiences.

It never fails to blow me away just how engaged, impassioned, and committed our global, pet-loving community is. Until next time…!

Best,

[ThePetProfessor]

Thanks, Mathew. I suspect the issue most of us want to hear about from the survey is the 5 applicants limit. But you make no mention of this. What did people say in the survey about this issue?

[Timshazz]

@ThePetProfessor Exactly. I’ve been sitting back patiently waiting to see what they would say about the feedback and then if they would do anything to change or roll it back. Sounds like we’ve all been ignored yet again.

[Daisy999]

It was nice to receive the email with news that the review system is getting its much needed overhaul and that members are happy with the quality and quantity of sits. Let’s hope there’s an update soon to the availability of such sits.

[Itchyfeet]

Hi @Mathew-CEO
Thank you for the update including promising features.
However, we would all be interested to see whether you are now reading these replies as it is safe to say that a massive majority of sitters want the 5 applications limit to be scrapped

[KenandMary1998]

@Itchyfeet @Mathew-CEO Took a quick look today at the thread about “Conclusion of Pausing Application…” and there are currently one thousand two hundred twenty eight posts about the 5-appliction limit. A content analysis of these posts might support the feeling many have shared in the Forum – that this “improvement” has caused unintended and undesirable consequences.

Can’t help but wonder if any other topic (since the THS Forum began) has ever generated this much engagement. Certainly, with 1228 posts, does one think the topic should be ignored?

[Ben-ProductManager]

Hi @ThePetProfessor

I am sorry if you missed the survey results section in the above post, so I have copied it here for reference:

I am more than happy to expand and let you know that the survey results came back very positive across the board.

Regarding Pausing, we undertook the survey based on feedback from the forum members. As we listened to your concerns that we may have negatively impacted the quality and quantity of sits and sitters. The good news is this has not been the case where we have reached out to a wider audience.

From the survey, we had a very small percentage of members who were not happy about the change, with the majority with positive feedback as noted above.

We had extremely positive feedback from owner members about being able to manage their listings more efficiently and respond to sitters quicker.

“I like it! It’s a good reminder for me to respond to everyone, which I think is the right thing to do”

“I like this feature. It gives me time to review and consider the applications without being overwhelmed by too many choices”

This is also shown by how the platform is currently performing:

@Mathew-CEO

we’re now seeing record numbers of: sits being posted, owners finding the perfect sitter, and sitters confirming a sit. Just incredible!

Your feedback has helped us highlight areas that we also wanted to iterate and improve. These are the ‘discoverability of sits’ and saved search and management of applicants and response rate with a message.

@Timshazz We never want anyone to feel ignored, we have been listening and the majority of feedback has been very positive as mentioned above. This is now how the platform works and we are happy to share that all members continue to have success and more Pets are now being looked after.

Thanks, Ben

[Timshazz]

@KenandMary1998 I have been keeping data that shows what a huge impact the rule has on availability (I have over 4000 favorites so its a statistically valid sample of the whole site.) I’ve been waiting for the results from the survey to see whether it was worth putting it out for comment and discussion to the wider house sitting community and see if it reflects what others are also experiencing. Its already been shut down on this forum and sent to the production team for comment. I’m waiting eagerly for their response to see if they can validate the data or let me know what’s wrong with it. But if correct its pretty mind blowing.

[Timshazz]

@Ben-ProductManager I have passed on a summarry of the some data ive been keeping via @Angela_L . I’d like a response on whether the data is sound or if its a problem with the filters. Happy to provide a spreadsheet and a copy of notes I’ve been keeping and discuss further.

[Daisy999]

Good evening @Ben-ProductManager, I have a question about the pausing feedback via the survey. From the comments quoted its clear to see how positive some owners have found the feature, what’s the consensus from sitters? Thank you.

[ThePetProfessor]

Thanks, Ben, but I am not convinced by two pieces of qualitative feedback; one might suspect you are cherry picking the data. Can you show us a quantitative analysis of positive and negative appraisals of the changes?

Specifically, of all the survey responses, how many people said something negative about the 5 application limit, and how many positive? (Any responses would be interesting given this information was not specifically requested and you relied on survey respondents knowing that this was an issue worth addressing; many members, possibly, do not even know about the 5 application limit and its impact on both sitters and owners and the applications submitted and received).

Second thing: record numbers of sits are no indication of whether the 5 application limit is working well or is appropriate. The point is not that owners cannot find sitters. It is that sitters are unfairly excluded from seeing listings. It feels to me like you just do not understand the issues in play if this is how you respond.

[Timshazz]

@ThePetProfessor Which is EXACTLY what my data shows.

[Kelownagurl]

I think the main reason THS has done this is because there are a lot of sitters out there and a few of us who have lots of good reviews and tend to get the best sits all the time. By putting in the 5 application rule, more less experienced sitters get a chance to apply because it goes to whoever is the first to see it, not necessarily to people with lots of experience/reviews.

I also suspect, without any proof, that there are a lot of UK sitters , and they are now in a better position to get the more limited European sits because they are in the same/similar time zone.

Highly desirable sits will now tend to go to people in the same/similar time zone. (This wouldn’t bother me if I mostly wanted to sit in Canada and the US, but I want France and Italy so…)

Despite the fact that there seem to be a lot of us here who are unhappy with the pause rule, I doubt THS will ever change it. They may end up losing some of us but they won’t care because they have lots of people to take our place.

My big wish would be that they’d make it a 24 hour limit + 5 application pause instead, so I could have a chance at the sits in Europe. Ah well.

[Timshazz]

@Kelownagurl if they changed it to 24 hrs i would happily get back in my box and be forever positive about everything house sitting once again. (As i had been for the previous 5 years enthusiastically recruiting new members hand over fist and helping them on a path to success.)

[Angela_L]

Hi @KenandMary1998

This is actually a great question and we can confirm we have analysed the Conclusion of Pausing thread as it is an important data point.

What we found is that when we took away all of the moderation and staff post, the remaining comments were from a smaller group of users, in fact, 43% of all comments came from under 20 contributors.

We are grateful for their voices as it has helped identify early issues such as owners being able to unpause, which was then modified.

Whilst many comments were duplicates, please be assured that they were all read and part of our consideration.

[KenandMary1998]

@Angela_L

Angela, thank you for taking the time to respond. Appreciate it. I’m certain being a forum moderator is no picnic!

[MissChef]

I’ve NEVER gotten a notice of one of my favorites becoming available. I even saw homes that I had favored before on my list, with availability, and never got any notification of it.

I am on both the website and the phone app daily, and I have never gotten any notice on either one.

[systaran]

The survey was not designed to get input from members about the 5 pause policy. There were zero questions about it.

[Carla]

Hello, @MissChef I have asked Membership Service to reach out and help you with this as you should be getting favourite notifications via the app. Please look out for their email and you can also follow up at support@trustedhousesitters.com

[Goodboyjakey]

@Ben-ProductManager If you are happy that members overall satisfaction is at 85% that means 15% are not and therefore, as a business, I would be finding out why.
If you are so sure that pausing applications is so poular, then you could have no fears about offering owner members the option to opt out of this if they wish to( a simple check box on their profile would suffice)