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The challenge
In an on-demand home-services marketplace, the moment that matters most for the customer is the request itself. Someone needs a plumber, an electrician or a carpenter, often today. They want to ask once, know that someone has accepted, see when the professional is on the way, talk to them if something changes, and pay in the way they normally pay. When that journey is split across phone calls, messaging apps and cash negotiated at the door, the customer is left guessing at every step, and the marketplace loses sight of the job as soon as the request is sent. Payment is its own problem: in many markets, customers expect to pay from a mobile-money wallet, not a card. JobBox needed a customer app that keeps the whole request in one place, from the first tap to the final payment.
Architecture
We built the JobBox customer app in Flutter. The marketplace's operator and admin side runs on the Laravel admin we also built, covered in our earlier JobBox case studies. This case study looks only at one part of the customer app: the life of a single request.
Solution
One form to book. From a service category, a search or the nearby professionals map, the customer opens a Request Service form. It asks for the service type, a description of the problem, where the service should be done, a preferred date and time, and the payment method, then sends the request in one step. One timeline to follow. Every request gets a Request Detail screen with the location, a price breakdown and a status timeline: Request Sent, Accepted, On the Way, Arrived, Job Started and Completed. Each step is ticked off as the job moves forward, and a Track Live link lets the customer follow the job live. Requests are grouped into All, Ongoing, Completed and Cancelled tabs, and a request can be cancelled with a confirmation step. One chat for the job. The customer can message the assigned professional from inside the app. The chat opens with a system message confirming the request was submitted, so the conversation and the request stay connected instead of moving to a separate messaging app. Payment the customer already uses. At booking, the customer chooses how to pay. The app integrates four mobile-money wallets (Orange Money, M-Pesa, Afrimoney and Airtel Money) and also offers cash after service for customers who prefer to pay once the work is done. The app's interface is in French.
Results
What the request lifecycle gives JobBox customers: - Booking a professional is one form, with the details the professional needs captured up front - A single timeline shows where the request stands, from Request Sent to Completed - Track Live lets the customer follow the job live instead of waiting without information - Conversation with the professional stays inside the app, tied to the request - Customers pay with an integrated mobile-money wallet or in cash after the service - Ongoing, completed and cancelled requests are kept in one list Next step Building a services marketplace and need a customer app that takes a request all the way from booking to payment? Talk to us at https://techmania.solutions
Related project
JobBox Customer App
We built the JobBox customer app in Flutter: find nearby pros by category, request a service, track each step, chat in-app and pay by mobile money or cash.
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