By the next morning it’s buried in the group. Here is exactly what we’d like to do about that.
The way it happens today
Every estate WhatsApp group in South Africa runs the same conversation, most weeks. Somebody needs something done, and they ask their neighbours. Within minutes, somebody who has used a good tradesman passes on the name — usually with a contact card, and almost always with a few words about why. That is a recommendation, from a named neighbour, about a named tradesman, inside a defined community. It is the strongest signal in this entire market.
But the recommendation is buried under school-run notices, lost dogs and load-shedding schedules by the next morning. Next month somebody asks the same question, and the same name gets typed out again — if anyone remembers it.
What we’d do
A neighbour’s word is more credible than an institution’s endorsement, because a real person actually said it. So the recommendation always comes from “a neighbour,” never from your estate.
Your estate
Capture recommendation
Someone at Mendly notes the recommendation. Four fields: who was recommended, their number, their trade, and what was asked for.
Vusi M
Precision Blinds · Blinds & shutters
Before anything is sent, the system checks whether he is already on Mendly, whether he has already been recommended anywhere else, and whether he has ever asked us not to contact him.
+27 71 ••• ••••
online
You’ve come highly recommended
Match. Mend. Mendly.
This is the exact message, word for word. The recommendation is credited to the group — never to a person. Debbie is never mentioned, never contacted, and never has to explain herself to anybody.
What the estate gets
Every quarter, a summary you can post into your own group — how many recommended tradespeople are now findable, and which trades are covered. Where residents keep asking for a trade nobody has recommended, we tell you that too, and we go and find someone.
We never message a resident. The resident link is posted by you, into your group, by your own contact person. That is what the permission covers, and it is also what works.
Your estate · Quarter one
Our commitment to your estate
Recommendations are credited to the group. We hold no resident data from this process.
Ever. No follow-ups, no sequences, no campaigns.
Honoured immediately, across every estate and every channel we run.
No capture happens in any estate we don't have a written agreement with.
One word from your contact person and capture and sending pause the same day. No notice period, no conversation required.
Every week, your residents recommend good people to each other. All we’d like to do is make sure those recommendations don’t disappear.