I've been a Homejoy customer for over a year. My wife and I have had the same cleaner for nearly all the appointments. We are very happy with the work she does.
For me, the killer application of Homejoy is in the scheduling and billing. Other local cleaning companies that had staff did not have the same web-based scheduling and payment tools.
Not sure how they enforce it, though.
I've been using different cleaners every time because of my experiences. But maybe next time, I should try sticking with just one. That way, the cleaner and I can start to build a relationship and they can get to know our apartment better. Then, maybe we can have a better overall experience.
In my experience with HomeJoy and Exec (now HandyBook), they understand the value of recurring revenue and are actively pushing for customers to have regular service. For this kind of service, I would think that would be very normal.
Scheduling is basically on autopilot, unless there's the odd case of my cleaner cannot come (weather, sickness, other stuff), or my cleaning date falls on a holiday. Being able to have Homejoy handle all the details of adjusting appointments (since they know my desired cleaner's full availability) is nice.
We'll see long term which of those two areas is more important (i.e. running a cleaning service, vs writing software for a cleaning service).