Upwork Leverages Nylas Scheduler to Enable Users to Hire Twice as Fast and Boosts Customer Satisfaction

Learn how Upwork allowed users to hire twice as fast and increased revenue with Nylas Calendar API and Nylas Scheduler.

Upwork, the world’s work marketplace, is where companies can find independent talent to grow their businesses and independent talent can find meaningful work to grow their careers. It’s designed to help clients and talent build strong working relationships so over time, companies can scale on-demand with a trusted talent bench and talent can secure fulfilling, consistent work.

On Upwork’s powerful, trust-driven platform, a client’s engagement with a freelancer doesn’t begin when they sign the contract – it begins with the initial vetting process. Clients are presented with tailored talent matches and can assess a freelancer’s work portfolio, skills and experience, client testimonials, and other vital information to help them hire the right person faster. Upwork strives to provide as seamless a hiring and freelancing experience as possible – from sourcing to project completion.

Once the client selects a freelancer, they can send a contract with set hours, pay rate, and a project deadline. Freelancers and clients communicate with each other via chat, video call, and file share – all within the Upwork platform.

Challenges:

Creating an end-to-end solution

Upwork found that customers who stay within the platform to conduct interviews hire much faster on average, filling jobs within 2-3 interviews vs. 5-7 interviews. This created the need to enhance in-platform scheduling features to promote platform usage and to eliminate users navigating outside the platform to make alternative arrangements with third party applications.

Building in-house means resource constraints and a hefty price tag

Upwork’s product team determined building the feature themselves would pull their focus away from other strategic initiatives they were working on. “Our primary use case is not scheduling meetings. We have such a complex platform that we can’t implement every solution on our own, so we look for the best solutions in the market. We needed a secure and reliable way to support our millions of users, that’s why we chose Nylas,” said Maksym Dudnyk, Product Manager at Upwork.

Solution:

Nylas provides a more seamless, flexible solution than other scheduling providers

Finding a suitable scheduling solution was a top priority. The team needed a solution that they could seamlessly embed into their application—not one that would add even more overhead to their clients’ workflows. To solve these challenges, Upwork selected the Nylas Calendar API and Scheduler. “Our initial implementation went quite smoothly, the Nylas team was responsive and helpful every step of the way,” said Dudnyk.

The team knew it needed a solution where both clients and freelancers could view availability in real-time, while keeping both parties’ calendars private. With Nylas, either party is able to schedule meetings seamlessly. All a meeting organizer has to do is set their hours of availability and the meeting length they prefer. Scheduler lets clients and freelancers pick a slot to be booked. Once a meeting is booked the Upwork platform creates a separate invite for each participant. By sending two separate invites, it ensures that the contact information remains hidden and users can’t meet outside the platform. Being able to schedule meetings within the platform removes friction from the hiring process for Upwork users, while ensuring that users conduct their deals within the platform – preserving revenue and engagement for the company.

The following GIF show the step-by-step scheduling flow:

1. First, the client reaches out to the freelancer about the job opening.
2. Both parties are given the option to connect their Google and/or Microsoft Calendars within the Upwork platform.
3. After granting permission and selecting how long for the meeting duration, a meeting can be created within the same conversation thread.
4. The freelancer opens the availability link, selects a date and time, and confirms. Then the meeting is created and the two invites are sent out.

Upwork saw such tremendous success implementing Nylas in its pre-hiring workflow, its internal sales teams decided to jump on board too. Moving forward, Upwork Sales will be using the Nylas Scheduler to speed up prospects time to conversion.

Results:

Faster interviewing leads to higher customer satisfaction score

Meetings can now be scheduled seamlessly within the Upwork platform in a way that wasn’t possible before. The increased efficiency and easier communication has created a more seamless user experience, encouraging users to stay within the platform which has preserved revenue for Upwork.

The primary key performance indicator (KPI) that Upwork’s messaging team tracks is its customer satisfaction score (CSAT) for how users evaluate the messaging of the platform. With the new Nylas-powered scheduling solution, Upwork saw an increase of its CSAT score by a few percentage points – from the low to mid 90’s. The company has seen tremendous growth with the scheduling feature, reaching over 300,000 connected accounts and a total of 5,800+ meetings scheduled weekly and growing. Over the last four months the average month-over-month growth has been over 20% of connected accounts.

As Upwork continues to grow, the company is looking to continue making the process of scheduling meetings even more user-friendly by simplifying and improving the flow and inviting more users to utilize the feature.