New platform promises to find trusted tradespeople

A NEW digital platform is aiming to improve consumer confidence in finding trusted tradespeople.

YourPro matches up local electricians, builders, painters and other professionals with consumers looking to get work done on their homes.

Established in 2015 and with operations across southern European countries (Greece, Cyprus, Portugal) the service was trailed in central Dublin at the end of last year and is now officially launched in Ireland.

According to a recent survey by YourPro, Irish consumers are open to a service that will provide reassurance when it comes to hiring professional tradespeople.

The survey revealed that over 70 percent of adults place finding a trustworthy tradesperson as one of their top three most daunting activities.

Over a third of people (35 percent) felt it was the most daunting thing to do ahead of making a dentist appointment (25 percent) and booking a driving test (11 percent).

As a nation, Irish people are ‘house proud’ with almost 60 percent of those surveyed saying they typically call upon the services of tradespeople at least once or twice a year to fix an issue, decorate or to renovate an area of the home.

Furthermore, almost half (44 percent) of adults claim that they plan to spend up to €3,000 on home renovations in the next 12 months.

When it comes to deciding on a tradesperson, cost is a key factor with almost 40 percent of respondents stating it is a major deciding factor with 20 percent citing quality of work as the most important element to them.

Waiting times can be a challenge with a quarter (25 percent) of those surveyed stating that it can take up to a month for a tradesperson to come to their home.

However, once a date for the service is confirmed, a quarter (25 percent) of people said they make sure there is extra milk for tea or coffee.

According to YourPro Founder and CEO, Andreas Grammatis, the platform’s success to-date in Europe has been phenomenal and the team is excited to launch the platform in Ireland.

“Ireland is a market we have been focusing on for some time now for many reasons,” he said.

“There is a strong pool of high-quality professional tradespeople with high consumer demand.

Having trialled our services in central Dublin at the end of 2021, we saw a tremendous response from consumers and tradespeople, with over 4,500 jobs posted and 1,500 fulfilled successfully on the platform already.

“Considering how daunted Irish people are at the thought of finding a tradesperson, our platform guarantees immediate response by highly qualified tradespeople by continuously ranking and matching them to the unique requirements of each job according to their reviews score and overall service performance.

“In line with this ethos, we are now expanding right across new home services categories and we are already seeing significant appetite from consumers as well as strong registrations from tradespeople interested in coming on board as platform partners.

“Our proprietary CRM is already enabling registered tradespeople to efficiencies across their job schedules and to take on more work without compromising quality and standard of services.”

There are over 90 job categories of trades available on www.yourpro.ie including renovations services, pest control, tiling, painting, plumbing and general repairs.