Shipt offers new features for customers and drivers

In time for the holidays, Shipt is upgrading its experience both for customers placing and delivery personnel fulfilling online orders.

The same-day delivery and last-mile company, which was acquired by Target in 2017, is introducing several new tools for its shoppers (Shipt’s term for the contactors who pick and deliver items for customer orders), including:

• Drop orders anytime: If a shopper has something come up before they start shopping an order, they no longer need to have a conversation with Shipt. With the click of a button, shoppers can now drop most orders, and Shipt headquarters personnel will ensure orders are claimed by another available shopper. 
• Incorporating chat into apps: Conversations between shoppers and customers will now take place in the Shipt shopper app instead of via SMS text, creating a central hub that keeps order information in one place. 
• Automatic ratings forgiveness: Soon, Shipt will roll out a new feature that tracks customer rating patterns and helps evaluate when a customer’s poor rating of a shopper should be forgiven.

Shipt is also making efforts to redesign its customer experience:

• Universal search: A new browsing feature allows customers to first search for the product they’re looking for, and then serves up results across all the retailers that carry that product.
• Homepage refresh: Before, when a customer opened the Shipt app, they would land on the page of the store they had previously shopped. Now, customers have visibility into all stores in their area, as well as access to inspirational shopping content. Shipt intends to show deals more prominently and make it easier for customers to have access to multiple carts they may be building.

Shipt is also streamlining the pick-up process for orders leveraging Shipt Driven, its delivery-only, last-mile offering for retailers. 

• Package scanning at pick-up: Retailers can now provide more upfront details and have shoppers scan packages at pick-up, in an effort to improve accuracy across all components of an order. 
• Shopper’s name on orders: As soon as Shipt Driven order is claimed, the shopper’s name is quickly made available to the retailer for improved hand-off. 
• Delivery dimensions: Retailers can now provide Shipt with more details on an order’s size, to improve the likelihood that an order is able to fit in a shopper’s vehicle. 

“With everything we do, big and small, launch or upgrade, enhancing the Shipt experience is our focus,” said Smrutha Ipparthi, chief product officer, Shipt. “We’re excited to be introducing these enhancements, as they’re creating easier and more efficient experiences for shoppers, customers and retailers during the busiest shopping time of the year.” 

[Read more: Shipt in biggest national expansion in three years]

Shipt provides personal shopping and delivery and is available to 80% of households in more than 5,000 U.S. cities. An independently operated, wholly-owned subsidiary of Target Corp, Shipt was founded and headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., and also maintains an office in San Francisco.