Porch optimized communications between homeowners & contractors

Porch uses Twilio as the foundation that enables homeowners to communicate with local home improvement professionals in the way they prefer.

Taking the pain out of home improvements

Porch’s mission is to connect users to local, vetted professional contractors, helping make home improvements easier and more accessible. Porch’s home services network boasts 3.8 million professionals who have completed more than 132 million projects.

From the beginning, Porch was interested in taking the pain out of home improvement projects for its users by facilitating the best communication possible. Recognizing that its customers still preferred to call contractors directly, it needed a solution that would connect users to available contractors quickly and affordably.

Connecting homeowners to contractors in 60 seconds

To achieve this objective, the company turned to Twilio. To enable a fast, effective communication channel between homeowners and contractors, Porch assigns a Twilio VoIP number to every professional engaged on Porch and developed its Pro Dial product. Pro Dial can automatically dial out and connect a homeowner directly to the pro who is available—in less than 60 seconds.

For Porch, this means that customers can get in touch with available professionals faster than ever before, improving customer satisfaction and increasing the number of leads for Porch’s network of home professionals. Thanks to Twilio’s text message capabilities, the company’s Contractor Alerts now can be sent via text message, enabling even faster response times. “Using Twilio’s platform, we’re able to actually send a text message directly to the professional, so they can get back in touch with the homeowner to start bidding the job,” said Jason Milstead, VP of products at Porch.

Twilio has enabled Porch to communicate in the most effective way using both homeowners’ and contractors’ desired modes of communication. Homeowners can communicate with professionals about prospective projects over the phone, and Porch can reach out and alert contractors of a new inquiry immediately, thanks to its ability to send text messages. Porch found that professionals responded faster to text messages than to emails. “We found that emails don’t get checked as often as text messages,” said Milstead.

Twilio adds fuel to the business

Porch’s collaboration with Twilio has fueled business growth and scalability. “Twilio allows us to prove that the solution works before we have to go and invest even more development time,” added Milstead.