Marketplace supply. Are providers available where demand is?

In this fictional case, searches grew 30%, completed bookings 8% and provider headcount 5% across comparable periods.

Suppose the underlying counts are:

Completed bookings per search fell from 50% to 41.5%. The marketplace is handling more jobs, but a smaller share of expressed demand becomes a completed booking.

That result does not tell you whether the obstacle is availability, price, matching, booking friction or cancellations. It tells you where the diagnosis needs to begin.

I would ask:

“Can we compare requested appointments with available slots by neighbourhood and day, alongside bookings and completions? I want to see whether the gap is broad or concentrated.”

Provider headcount is a stock. Available appointment slots describe what can be sold during the period. Completed jobs show what the marketplace actually delivered.

Define supply around successful matching in the customer's location and time window. A directory of profiles does not show whether the requested service is available.

Suppose two underserved neighbourhoods show this weekly pattern:

Aggregate supply equals aggregate demand. Yet, even with perfect matching within each row, the marketplace can fulfil only 300 weekday plus 200 weekend requests = 500.

There are 300 unused weekday slots and 300 unmet weekend requests. Broad recruitment could add more weekday availability and leave the weekend problem unchanged.

The useful next question is whether existing providers can shift some availability, what it would cost and whether moving those slots would sacrifice actual weekday jobs.

The case offers two options for a four-week pilot in the affected neighbourhoods:

Assume every additional completed job contributes £15 before these programme costs. The incentive option shifts currently unused weekday capacity, so the exercise gives no displaced weekday contribution.

Schedule incentives generate 180 completions and £2,700 contribution, less £1,600 incentives, leaving £1,100 over the pilot.

Targeted recruitment generates 216 completions and £3,240 contribution, less £648 ongoing cost and £3,000 onboarding, leaving −£408 in the first pilot period.

On this short horizon, incentives are financially stronger and quicker to test. But that does not settle the long-term choice.

If recruited providers supply the same 240 slots in a second four-week period without another onboarding charge, their contribution after the £3 per completed job is 216 × (£15 − £3) = £2,592.

Across two periods, targeted recruitment generates 2 × £2,592 − £3,000 = £2,184. Two comparable incentive periods generate £2,200. Across three, recruitment reaches £4,776, versus £3,300 for incentives.

That comparison depends on retained provider availability and stable demand. It suggests a sensible sequence: use incentives to test near-term demand while assessing whether targeted recruitment can provide durable supply.

A recommendation based only on the first-period loss would miss the value of spreading a one-time cost across continuing activity.

Available slots can disappear if providers cancel, reject requests or forget to update calendars. Track the full chain: slot displayed, booking made, provider accepted and job completed.

If weekend slots increase but completions do not, look at that chain before increasing the incentive. Paying for an advertised slot can create the wrong behaviour when the objective is a completed job.

The incentive design might therefore need to reward reliable completion, while still recognising that providers bear a cost when reserving time. The case should tell you enough to compare those trade-offs; do not assume a payment rule solves every behaviour automatically.

“The shortage is concentrated in weekend availability in two neighbourhoods. I would pilot schedule incentives there and measure incremental completed jobs and contribution. In parallel, I would assess targeted recruitment over a longer horizon, because its onboarding cost is recovered only if the added supply persists.”

This is more precise than “we need more providers.” It names the constrained supply, the immediate intervention and the question that determines the durable solution.

Try Home-Services Marketplace Fill-Rate Decline. Before choosing recruitment, specify the available service unit and the comparison you need. The data-request guide shows how to trace an earlier stage of this diagnosis through a booking funnel.