By Service Seeking

11/22/2012 @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "ＭＳ 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }.MsoChpDefault { font-family: Cambria; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; } A recent survey conducted by ServiceSeeking.com.au, showed that going online to find businesses to get jobs done took much less time than using traditional methods.

In the perpetual race against time, busy Australians are finding that web tools such as ServiceSeeking.com.au are much better than the local paper and the Yellow Pages for getting quotes from responsive businesses.

66% of respondents who used Service Seeking to get quotes and choose a business zipped ahead, getting quotes within an hour of posting a description of the job they needed to get done. Just 5% waited more than 4 hours for their quote.

Meredith from Milton QLD struggled with traditional methods of finding and hiring a carpenter to fix her gate and stairs. Direct calls went unanswered, or tradies took up to a week in getting round to responding.

She was “stunned” when she got half a dozen quotes from carpenters overnight after posting a short job description at 5PM on a Saturday.

40% of survey respondents also used a search engines such as Google to find businesses, and spent less than 1 hour in their search.

On the other hand, the process of finding businesses was sluggish when it came to using traditional methods like local news classifieds and the Yellow Pages. 80% of survey respondents said that these options took up a lot more time.

Only 22% of respondents who browsed the local paper reported spending less than 1 hour, and 28% spent more than 4 hours.

Using the Yellow Pages consumes even more time, with 34% of respondents reporting that they spend more than 4 hours poring over the directory for businesses to hire.

Source: ServiceSeeking.com.au Customer Exit Survey, Oct 2012 n=588

Launched in 2007, ServiceSeeking.com.au is Australia’s largest online services marketplace, where consumers can post descriptions of jobs they need to get done and businesses can quote to win new work. 600,000 Australians and 70,000 businesses have already used the website. For further information, visit www.ServiceSeeking.com.au or contact Karina May at karina@serviceseeking.com.au.