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TDLR: 

I did a simple test where I left a thank you note for the customer. Thanking them for their order and tips. The platform I delivered on was Shipt, which allows customers to tip after you complete an order. I did this experiment to see if leaving a note will increase tips. 

Introduction: 

If you have been driving for gig economy brands like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Caviar, Grubhub, etc., you know that tips make a large portion of your income. Some platforms allow customers to tip upfront (Instacart and DoorDash, for example). These platforms make it hard to manipulate the tips or ‘hack the tips’ I call it. Other platforms such as Shipt and Caviar and the rideshare platforms Uber and Lyft allow customers (and riders) to tip after a completed transaction. These platforms allow gig workers to win that tip.

If you have downloaded Tips Hacking, one of the tested techniques to earn tips is leaving thank you notes on a receipt.

Why Use Thank You Notes?

In 1995, Bruce Rind and Prashant Bordia did a study. They found that when restaurant servers leave a personalized ‘thank you’ for their customers, they earn more tips. How much? 16-18% more. What was the underlying reason for this? Reciprocity. 

It means that when people receive something from somebody, this predisposes them to reciprocate in like manner. So, when a customer gets something, they will typically respond by leaving a larger tip.

My hypothesis is, will this work with Shipt orders? Instacart is a platform where customers can give a tip in advance. It created an issue for the platform known as ‘tip baiting.’ Customers leave a massive tip to bait shoppers into prioritizing their order and then later change the amount. I have seen this happen in my market. Sometimes you will see a gratuity that is $54 for three items. 

Shipt is the grocery delivery platform I have spent much of 2020 trying to master. A lot of it has been motivated by replicating the $100,000 a year feat of this one schoolteacher. With Shipt, customers tend to tip after a completed order when they rate the order, as prompted by the software. It allows shoppers to leave a note to thank the customer and impact the tips through reciprocity. 

That said, I tested this concept with the Shipt platform using thank you stickers from Drivertags.com.

Question:

Does leaving thank you notes result in more tips with grocery deliveries?

Material:

All you need for this are Delivery Driver Bag Seal Stickers. These cost $18 for 50 stickers.

The stickers I used said, “Thank you! Your review helps me deliver food to you, and your tip helps deliver food to my family!”

For data analysis, I used Excel.

Collecting Data By Leaving Thank You Notes: 

At the beginning of March, I did standard grocery deliveries on Shipt. I did not leave any notes for the customers. I started giving these stickers or sticking them to the customers’ orders during the middle of March. Then I recorded the number of tips for each order once the customer posts them. Then I analyzed the tips.

I kept everything as uniform as possible, which means using the automated intro text in the Shipt app, followed by the standard “on my way” message. And at the end of each delivery, I informed the customer their order was delivered. The only difference is some orders did not have these stickers in the grocery bags.

Results:

I compared the data for 87 orders completed without leaving the customer a thank you note (sticker) with 49 orders. I left a thank you (I had 50 stickers but lost one of them).

For orders without the stickers, 50 out of 87 customers tipped me. For orders with the stickers, 36 out of 50 customers tipped me. 

57% of the customers tipped when I did not leave a note. 73% of the customers tipped when I left a sticker.

The average tip was $12.02 for orders without stickers and $10.70 for orders with the stickers.

Average payout (from Shipt’s pay structure) for the 87 orders without the note was $10.14. The average payout for the 49 orders with the note was $11.25.

This table compares the amount of money earned under each condition. 

The percent of the income from tips was 41% for standard orders and 42% for the note’s orders. 

Discussion:

A lot of various factors are at play. Delivery speed, customer expectations, order value, quality of communication, and approval of the substitution of items all factor into the customers’ tipping decision. 

I expected 16-18% more money in tips, but it was only 1% (41% versus 42%) in actuality. It could be due to the diversity in the dynamics of a restaurant experience. The dynamics of modern-day online grocery delivery are different. There’s not enough interactions besides standardized text messages with grocery deliveries compared to a traditionally dine-in meal at a restaurant.

What was interesting to me was the difference in the percentage increase in the number of tippers. 57% versus 73% is a considerable amount. It tells me that the note did indeed cause more customers to want to reciprocate with a tip. But this reciprocity doesn’t mean they will open their wallet and tip big. The average tip for the orders without the notes was larger ($12.02 versus $10.70).

It’s tempting to place the sticker on only large orders to reap more significant tips because of a greater order value. But I wasn’t biased in the size of the order I used the stickers on since they were all completed back to back.

So is this a winning strategy for a gig driver? If you are selective, I think it can be selective which orders to use a ‘thank you’ note on. You’d want to use them on large orders and try to pump customers’ frequency, tipping you on these bigger orders. Suppose the customer opts for a percentage tip instead of a flat tip (say $5 or $10), then long term. In that case, you’ll make more money by increasing the frequency of customer tip on these big orders. 

Pro Tips On Leaving Thank You Notes:

If you end up trying this strategy out, here are some tips. 

#1. Make them visible to you. Sometimes it’s easy to forget to place one of these stickers with an order. Please put them in your car trunk, so you see them when you load the groceries in your car.

#2. Stick to stuff that will be opened. When possible, stick them onto something that is going to be opened by the customer, so they see it.

#3. Find practical uses for them. Like using them to secure fruits in bags. The customer will have to open the bag to get the fruits and will see the note.

#4. Refrain from sticking if possible. I always default to just placing the sticker in an obvious place without using the adhesive. For some orders, depending on what it was, it won’t make sense to peel the adhesive and stick it to the products. For example, if they’re buying a gift for someone, you shouldn’t put a sticker on the item. Use judgment, so you don’t annoy a customer with your sticker placement. 

Where To Get Thank You Notes?

Again, you can use my referral link to get these stickers from Drivertags.com. For $18, the 50 stickers will more than get you your money back with this strategy. 

Happy deliveries. Stay safe.

Related Topics:

• Case Study: Make $2,000 A Week Delivering Groceries With Shipt
• Case Study: Do Shipt Shoppers Make More With Bundled Orders?

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