Instacart wants to hear from shoppers

Instacart is introducing a virtual community for its customers.

The on-demand grocery delivery platform is launching Shop Talk, a virtual community designed to bring shoppers and the company together. Within Shop Talk, customers will be able to discuss anything related to Instacart. This includes giving or receiving advice to and from other shoppers, asking questions of Instacart, and publicly sharing shopping experiences. 

Along with discussion opportunities, shoppers can also leave direct feedback about the Instacart app in the form of “Shopper Ideas.” The ideas that receive enough upvotes from the community will be presented directly to the Instacart team on a quarterly basis for consideration to be incorporated into the app. Other features include shopper groups that enable users to discuss specific issues in a smaller setting, a collection of profiles of real Instacart shoppers called “Bravocado,” and badges that can be earned for reaching milestones such as number of posts or how much advice they have offered.

"Instacart shoppers are picking and packing from the aisles of tens of thousands of grocery stores across North America every day,” said Sean Twersky, senior director of operations at Instacart. “Each of those shopping experiences is an invaluable opportunity for us to listen, learn, and use feedback to develop a better shopper experience. With Shop Talk, we're providing an online community where shoppers can engage with each other and the broader Instacart community."

Shop Talk has been piloted with a select group of shoppers over the past several months, resulting in an active user base that Instacart says is more than triple the average for similar virtual communities. Shoppers spend an average of almost an hour a month in Shop Talk, viewing an average of more than five pages in each visit. 

Along with Shop Talk, Instacart is introducing other new resources for shoppers, including the addition of new lessons to Carrot Academy, its online resource for shopper learning on relevant shopper-focused topics. These new lessons join existing subjects on picking high-quality items, making replacements, and communicating with customers. The Carrot Academy library now includes more than 15 optional lessons to help shoppers learn best practices.

Instacart has also refreshed its shopper website, shoppers.instacart.com, to highlight the unique reasons shoppers choose to shop with Instacart and feature members of the shopper community who wish to share their story.

Instacart delivers from more than 25,000 stores across more than 5,500 cities in the U.S. and Canada.