With many home services, it can be hard to pin down a reliable provider that will call you back, show up on time, and consistently perform a good job. This is magnified during especially stressful times, like move-in and move-out.
While aggregators such as Angie’s List provide reviews for service companies, sometimes these providers aren’t licensed, as Christian Ries found out.
“After calling three different plumbers, the last one answered and offered a 3-hour appointment a week away. I couldn’t take half a day off work. I had a very bad customer experience as the plumber just said, take it or leave it,” says Ries.
Ries saw the need for technology to streamline the entire home service provider booking process. But instead of going after the homeowner as customer, Ries saw potential in a B2B2C model where realtors would be the point of entry.
“Homeowners normally turn to the realtor to get recommendations from providers in their network,” says Ries. This happens both during the process of buying a home and selling it.
On average, according to Ries, a homeowner spends $10,500 in the first year of living in their new house.
He co-founded Jonny On It to streamline the process of service provider recommendations and standardize the booking experience, using realtors as the distribution channel.
Jonny On It provides realtor companies with a white label option that gets added to their existing apps. The homeowner can book the needed services through that app.
With Jonny On It, the average response from a service provider is between 90 seconds to 15 minutes. The homeowner can pay for services and follow up on the platform.
Jonny On It populates the licensed home services marketplace through recommendations from realtors and partnerships with larger companies in the service industry.
The service providers have access to a dashboard to get a high view of all the jobs in their queue.
The Atlanta-based startup charges a fee for every completed job, though the white label offering for realtor companies is currently free to build up customer loyalty.
They’ve on-boarded several realtors already, including Mark Spain, Coldwell Banker, Harry Norman, and Dorsey Alston.
“One of the thing Jonny On It prides itself on is that we create partnerships that we expect to be lifelong. It has to be a win-win for everybody,” says Ries.
“We don’t want to charge them for the lead. We’ve been listening to our customers and they’re very tired of that model.”
To date, the startup has a 44 percent repeat customer rate.
The team of six has raised $1.1 million in seed funding this week from several angel investors earmarked for expansion. They will be broadening to a new market outside of Georgia and adding on new features and revenue channels.
