Service Seeking

Updated on Dec 23, 2023

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Type of business Private Chairman Anthony Klok Headquarters Sydney, Australia		Area served Australia Products ServiceSeeking.com.au Founded 2007

Industry Online marketplace, Price comparison service Services Pricing guides Market surveys Founders Jeremy Levitt, Daniel Sabados, Oliver Pennington

Next steps for new service seeking businesses

ServiceSeeking is an online marketplace that offers quotes and price comparison services to consumers and businesses. Since launching in 2007, the site has registered more than 140 000 Australian businesses and seen $3.2bn worth of jobs posted by customers. Businesses registered with ServiceSeeking.com.au cover a range of local services, from tradespeople to accountants to graphic designers.

History

Jeremy Levitt, Oliver Pennington and Daniel Sabados co-founded Service Seeking in 2007, with the launch of ServiceSeeking.com.au. Levitt and Pennington are joint chief executive officers of Service Seeking, and Sabados is the company's chief technology officer. The company's chairman is Anthony Klok, a former chief executive and director of Betfair Australia and former head of business development for James Packer's Crown.

While working as a property lawyer at Allens Arthur Robinson, Levitt noticed that firms were constantly quoting to win work through competitive tenders, and at his first business, PodProperty, an online legal service provider which specializes in co-ownership agreement, Levitt got frustrated when trying to organize tradespeople for jobs. This gave him the idea to start ServiceSeeking.com.au with Pennington and Sabados. It was reported that Levitt says "We thought there was a real opportunity to create a paradigm shift in the way people researched and hired service businesses."

It was reported that when Service Seeking was first launched in 2007 in Australia, it concentrated on building customers, utilising online marketing and search engine optimisation; it avoided major advertising campaign and heavy brand building until July 2012. Service Seeking was reported to be growing during the global financial crisis of 2007–08, but with increasing costs.

Services and products

Service Seeking provides online services market platform for consumers and businesses to trade. The websites of Service Seeking enable consumers to list their jobs and allow businesses to quote on the jobs. Their popular job categories include accounting, building, graphic design, photography and furniture removal. As at September 2012, Service Seeking has a staff of about 50 and it has plans to hire about 30 more staff. Its customer support desk with 35 staff members runs for 12 hours everyday. It has over a million users as at September 2014, with more than AUD200 million worth of jobs completed through its website in 2012, and over 42,000 jobs a month were being posted as at September 2014, equalling $46 million worth of work. More than 140,000 businesses are aligned to the site, submitting more than 60,000 quotes a month. In 2014, ServiceSeeking.com.au released an iPhone app where you can submit your job, receive quotes and read reviews about the local business before making a decision. Each business that works with Service Seeking needs to be certified by the site which involves the business taking a free online training course that shows them how to quote and respond to customers meaning all businesses on the site are licensed and reputable. If they have two or more serious complaints against them, their accounts with Service Seeking will be terminated.

ServiceSeeking.com.au

ServiceSeeking.com.au was launched in October 2007. It is a tendering website, primarily for jobs in building, construction and household trades, including plumbing, electrical services and concreting. It permits only local traders with an Australian Business Number to register. To explain why it registers only local traders, the co-founder Jeremy Levitt was reported to have said that "We have taken the view that we don't want overseas businesses on our site, because we don't want to drive prices down." Levitt explained to A Current Affair why the online market is changing the way tradesman compete for work, "You’re comparing not only price but you’re looking at reviews, business license details, and you can compare them not just on the price but on the scope of work". "It takes you about 30 seconds to post your job, and only businesses that have the capacity to do the job today will send you a quote".

Data collection, pricing guides and market surveys

Service Seeking collects pricing data from the quotes submitted on its websites and uses it to provide pricing guides. From the data that Service Seeking collects, it also conducts surveys of industries and markets. Some reported pricing guides and industry or market surveys initiated by Service Seeking include:

[January 2017] The Tradie Rich List published by ServiceSeeking.com.au ranks the best paid tradespeople in Australia based on 52, 000 quotes submitted through the website in Q2 FY2017 compared to the previous year. The list revealed the average rates charged per hour in WA, NSW, VIC and QLD across 10 different trade industries. WA Plumbers ($94.44) and Electricians ($92.24) were revealed as Australia’s highest earning tradespeople.

[September 2016] A ServiceSeeking.com.au customer survey of 14,000 married couples revealed interesting insights about weddings in Australia. The survey found that budget weddings are becoming the norm, with 32% of brides spending less than $5000 on their wedding.

[August 2016] The Renovation Consumer Price Index for Q4 of 2015-2016 financial year published by ServiceSeeking.com.au compares the change in price of ten renovation industries from Q4 of 2015 to Q4 of 2016. The prices are reflective of the average bid price tradesmen placed on jobs posted by thousands of customers in Australia. The figures reported that Australian tradies increased their hourly rates by an average of 1.4% in April-June 2016 compared to the previous year. The trade categories recording the highest per hour rates included electricians ($75.56) and plumbers ($80.92).

[May 2016) The Tradie Rich List published by ServiceSeeking.com.au ranks the best paid tradespeople in Australia based on 52, 000 quotes submitted through the website in the third quarter of 2016 compared to the previous year. The list revealed the average rates charged per hour in WA, NSW, VIC and QLD across 10 different trade industries. WA Plumbers ($87.67) and Electricians ($87.33) were revealed as Australia’s highest earning tradespeople.

[August 2014] The Renovation Consumer Price Index for Q4 2014 published by ServiceSeeking.com.au compares the change in price of ten renovation industries from Q4 of 2013 to Q4 of 2014. The prices are reflective of the average bid price tradesmen placed on jobs posted by thousands of customers in Australia. The report reveals that prices have only increased by 0.33% year on year, which is well under the 2.9% rate of inflation. Victoria and New South Wales are still the best markets for consumers after recording year-on-year price decreases.

[March 2014] The Renovation Consumer Price Index for Q3 2014 published by ServiceSeeking.com.au compared the change in price of ten renovation industries from Q3 of 2013 to Q3 of 2014. The prices are reflective of the average bid price tradesmen placed on jobs posted by thousands of customers in Australia. The figures revealed that prices in 8 of 10 renovation industries fell compared to annual inflation. Victoria and New South Wales recorded the biggest falls in renovation prices with average rates down by 6.4% and 4.6% respectively.

[November 2012] The Australian Services Buyers Guide 2012 published by ServiceSeeking.com.au gives customers an idea of how much money home renovation costs to possibly avoid overpriced quotes from tradespeople.

[July 2011] Survey of 1100 quotes found that renovating costs were lowest in the north and highest in the east of Melbourne.

[November 2010] Survey of more than 70,000 business service quotes covering the average costs for a range of business services showed that clients may be paying too much.

[September 2010] Survey of the names of over 28,000 small businesses to see if those with the most unusual names were winning the most tenders found that humorously named businesses that quote well and follow up with clients are more successful.

[May 2010] Trade and Household Services Pricing Guide produced from the survey of more than 70,000 quotes submitted between October 2007 and March 2010 on ServiceSeeking.com.au showed that the average hourly prices of tradesmen in Victoria were 4.6 per cent cheaper than in New South Wales and 5.2 per cent friendlier than Queensland, making the cost of building and renovating to be most expensive in Queensland and cheapest in Victoria.

[March 2009] A research by Service Seeking found that haggling activity on ServiceSeeking.com.au had increased by 42 per cent in the first quarter of the year, compared with the last quarter of 2008.

Financing

In its first year of operations, Service Seeking did not charge for its services. It now earns revenue from membership fees paid by businesses. The capital for starting the business came from the co-founders and their families and friends; a venture capital fund that had committed to the business went under, and to keep Service Seeking from going under, they applied for a Research and Development grant and negotiated extended payment terms with suppliers. They later raised enough money from their current chairman, Anthony Klok to grow the business, develop their revenue model and eventually break even. While the website currently facilitates online payments through PromisePay, co-founder and CEO Jeremy Levitt was reported to have said that “as long as the cash economy remains, tradesmen want a percentage of their revenue to be in cash because it lowers their tax”. Levitt explained that booking local services is more complex than an Uber-style transaction.

Affiliations

In 2009, Service Seeking partnered with TrueLocal to power TrueLocal's Get Quotes feature which allows consumers to post details of a job or service they need, with businesses competing for the work. Service seeking has alliance partnerships with Ninemsn, Yahoo!7, NRMA, eBay, TrueLocal, Realestate.com.au, 1Form and RP Data.

References

Service Seeking Wikipedia

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