A Message From Our CEO, Mathew Prior

Hi,

As we head into August, I’d like to reflect on what a great few months it has been for us here at TrustedHousesitters. Our community now sits at 175,000 pet-loving members, with an incredible 100,000 sits already confirmed so far this year.

It never fails to blow me away just how incredibly open-hearted, inspiring, and adventurous the members of our wonderful, growing pet people community are. As a member of TrustedHousesitters, you’re all helping to shape a worldwide movement based on trust, kindness, and a shared love of animals - changing the way people travel and the way pets are cared for forever.

Trending posts

Purr-use some of the top blogs our members have been loving this month

It’s on that note that I’d like to share some of the recent work being done by our teams to help ever improve your member experience - such as:

New past sit and past sitter pages

These two new pages make it easier than ever for our members to view all of their past sits or past sitters in one easy place, and leave a review/feedback following their house sit. The past sits page for sitters is already live, with the new past sitters page for owners due to launch very shortly.

New helpful reminders to leave a review

Our product team recently added new, helpful reminders for both owners and sitters to leave a review/feedback following their house sit. These will pop up once a member logs into their account on the site following a completed sit.

We know how important reviews are to you all, they fuel the openness and trust that sit behind every experience, so we hope this makes it even easier to share your feedback. Next in line, the team will be continuing their work to revamp our current review system, and we’ll be sure to share more updates on this soon.

New pet-centric sitter profile fields

Pets are at the heart of everything we do here at TrustedHousesitters, which makes this a particularly exciting update. We’ll soon be adding new pet-specific tags that sitters can add to their profiles, to indicate things such as:

Whether a sitter has experience with specific types of pets (such as puppies, senior animals, or certain breeds)
If they can administer medication
If the sitter is also a pet parent (or if they’ve ever owned pets in the past)
If the sitter has previously cared for (or owned) a specific breed of pet
Total years of pet sitting experience

This has been completely tailored to the feedback we’ve received from you all, and we believe it's going to be a game-changer for both owners and sitters to find their perfect match.

Increased Membership Services support

Our member support improvements went live in May as planned, and we have already helped to resolve over 20,000 member inquiries via our new and improved self-help desk functionality. Additionally, we’ve more than doubled the availability of our live chat agents, with lots of great feedback on the response times, accuracy, and speed of resolution.

Now, onto some exciting team news…

This month, TrustedHousesitters was selected for The Escape 100: a global top 100 put together by Escape the City, a well-respected career site for purpose-driven organisations worldwide. We were chosen from 14,000 nominations and a rigorous application process, scoring highly across 6 criteria (Impact, People, Mission, Planet, Innovation, and B-Corp). This win comes at a time when more people than ever are shifting their attention towards more planet-friendly, people-first, purpose-led companies. I couldn’t be more proud of our collaborative, innovative, and highly engaged team, and our 27% employee growth over the last 12 months is a real source of pride.

As a remote-first business, we empower our employees to work anywhere, and in the way that works best for them. But of course, we also recognise the importance of meeting up as a team now and then, and so, I’d like to share a few snaps from our most recent company offsite, hosted last month in Brighton:

Next, I'd like to talk a little about our charity partner, The Animal Pad (TAP), a volunteer-led rescue organisation based in San Diego. They are undertaking a huge rescue operation to save 400 dogs from unimaginable conditions. When one of our own team members and TAP volunteer, Julie brought this heartbreaking situation to our attention, we knew we had to try and help.

We’ve made a donation to the rescue mission on behalf of TrustedHousesitters, and while we know that not everyone will be able to contribute in the current climate, any support you can give will make a significant impact. Donations can be made via The Animal Pad website, but even sharing the message with others can help expand the reach of our collective efforts, inspiring more individuals to lend a helping hand.

Lastly, I’d like to end with a little good news from our community forum. Since its launch back in 2021, I’ve loved seeing all the incredible conversations, discussions, and member meet-ups happening around the world - not to mention, the incredible growth of the forum (we’re now proudly at 10,000+ forum users!). If you're looking for some entertainment during your lunch break, this brilliant topic asking for naming suggestions for two newborn kids (of the farmyard variety, that is!) born while on a house sit, definitely caught our attention here at Trusted HQ!

As always, I’d highly encourage you to go and visit our friendly community forum, pursue some of the great discussions going on already, and perhaps even get involved in the conversation yourself!

Until next time, I hope you all stay safe, happy, and well.

Best,