Our team at PhotoUp has been encouraged by the resiliency we’ve seen in our industry over the past months as our photographer members, industry partners, and the PhotoUp team have all shifted our operations during the pandemic. At PhotoUp, we’re talking to our members daily and listening to how we can improve our service.
Below is an overview of operational and system changes we’re implementing to improve our service during this season and beyond.
Intelligent Editor Matching
In July, we introduced a new simplified order rating system that is now fully deployed. This change provides an improved user experience but also provides big under-the-hood improvements to our editor assignment algorithms. Moving forward, our system will learn which editors are a good match for your style and will intelligently match you more often. Editor matching will improve over the coming months as we collect more data for each member and create stronger editor-photographer relationships in the system.
Lower Costs
With widespread lockdowns around the globe starting in March and April, we knew we needed to help our photographers lower their costs. This presented the opportunity to launch our new Distributed Editing service, which allows photographers to have an editor in our network edit an order at a 25% reduction in cost. We also introduced unlimited credit rollovers for customers who remained on their same plans for the Summer months which helped nearly 50% of our member photographers.
Top Editor
Thanks to the new data we’re collecting with the new rating system, we’ll be launching a new editing option in September called Top Editor. This feature will allow members to select an order to be edited by an editor who has consistently been ranked highly for a particular member, helping ensure the highest level of editing quality possible for mission-critical orders.
Faster Revisions
One of the larger challenges of work-from-home has been returning revisions on-time due to slower home internet and the nature of a distributed workforce. Our team is currently working on optimizing operations so we have more editors dedicated to revisions so we can return revisions within our stated target of four hours or less.
Remote Training
One of the trickier parts of running a large remote editing team is training. PhotoUp’s customer success team has been hard at work this Summer to develop improved remote photo editing training courses for our team which will be rolling out this Fall. This will help our newest editors improve on their quality and help all editors learn the best and latest techniques in photo editing.
Virtual Staging
With COVID, real estate marketing has gone virtual. This year, our team is doubling down on providing our members with new virtual products and services which can help you expand your service offerings. In May, we officially launched our new virtual staging uploader for all members and have seen a strong uptick in orders already. We’re already working on exciting new features to help improve the virtual staging ordering process as well as expanding our library of virtual furniture.
Virtual Assistants
Sometimes you need a little extra help without the extra expense of hiring a full-time or long-term employee. In June, PhotoUp beta launched our new Virtual Assistant service with many customers raving about the new service. With a PhotoUp VA, you can hire a ¼ time, ½ time, or full-time virtual assistant to assist in your operations. A virtual assistant can help you do quality control, create tours, invoice clients, and assist with customer support.
Single Property Websites
We’re excited to announce PhotoUp has been working on a new single property website product that will be launching this Fall. This is a part of our on-going roadmap to help our members provide more virtual products for real estate marketing. We’ll be announcing more details in the coming weeks so stay tuned.
Limited Office Reopening
While this year will largely be about building systems where our team can effectively work remotely, our team is reviewing plans to test bringing a small portion of our team back to the office in Q4 this year. While this will likely not exceed 25% capacity, it will help us improve turnaround times and implement the systems needed for a broader return to the office in 2021.
We Want To Hear From You
While the pandemic has brought many on-going challenges our team at PhotoUp wants to help you navigate this tricky season. Our operations, support, and product development teams are working hard to provide you the products, services and systems you need to not just survive, but to thrive during COVID.
If you have any additional suggestions, feature requests or questions about how PhotoUp can help you and your business this season, please reach out to our USA support team, we’d love to hear from you.
