Facebook, currently the world's leading social network, believes that searching for an electrician or a plumber through Yellow Pages or on the Web is a lot of work. Now, it is teaming up with Pro.com, a website for looking for and employing certified home service professionals, in hopes of providing homeowners with a prompt scheduling of home projects at flat-rate prices.
On Wednesday, Oct. 7, Pro.com unveiled its Text-a-Pro service, allowing users to book a service professional via text message or Facebook Messenger.
"We are the first company to partner with Facebook to offer home services within Facebook Messenger," said Pro.com in a blog post. "By sending a message to Pro.com in Messenger, you can get a flat-rate price and schedule a trusted Pro, all within minutes conveniently from your mobile device."
The Text-a-Pro messaging service was developed to assist homeowners in completing their home projects quicker than ever before.
Users only need to text their home projects to 776-776 or send a message to the company via Facebook Messenger. Pro.com will then price the users' project and schedule a professional to do the tasks.
The service comes with the Pro.com Guarantee to make sure that customers are satisfied with the work completed.
"If a resolution cannot be met, we will pay another Pro to resolve it, up to the original amount paid by you, but not to exceed $1,000," says Pro.com.
What is great with using Facebook Messenger, according to the company, is that homeowners can also make use of stickers and GIFs for more expressive conversations.
At the moment, Pro.com notes that the Text-a-Pro service is only available for users who live in San Francisco and Seattle. However, it also mentioned that it is actively expanding into other cities where the company operates.
To date, customers have already requested over $350 million worth of home projects through Pro.com.
In the past months, we have seen that Facebook has continually added more functions to Messenger, including customer service, money transfers as well as a personal assistant dubbed M.
Facebook in August launched the personal assistant M designed to rival the likes of Siri and Google Now. M has the capacity to complete tasks for its users, including making reservations as well as ordering items.
In September, we reported that Facebook unveiled its plan to monetize the Messenger app by considering the consumer-to-business messaging capability as a huge opportunity.
Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's vice president of advertising, said that there is a big opportunity in the messaging space. He also said that customers want to transact with companies using Facebook's much-loved messaging service.
"We're at the very early stages of businesses having direct relationships with customers through messaging," said Bosworth. "We start with the consumer behaviors. If you think about consumers communicating to businesses through messaging, it's not a big leap to go from that to a monetization strategy."
