Your feedback in action
Here in the Community, we strive to foster a spirit of “building together.” While we continuously meet with our Pro Advisory Board to help us keep our fingers on the pulse of how the Thumbtack platform is working for pros, we’re also focused on engaging with pros here in the Community — and improving your experience with Thumbtack. With that in mind, we wanted to share some updates based on what we have been hearing from pros like you over the last few months.
Here’s what we heard:
- Customers don’t always understand the booking process
- Booking prices can be expensive
- Managing availability can be difficult
- I’m not being booked for the right next step
- Customers aren’t committed enough
Thanks to pros like you sharing your feedback and experiences, our teams have been able to build a roadmap of updates that will improve the Thumbtack experience for pros and customers. Here’s what we’re prioritizing for this half:
- Better aligning lead pricing with the job value
- Giving customers a clearer path to message vs book, based on their needs and level of intent
- Improving customer booking comprehension so that they better understand what a booking entails
- Increasing pro satisfaction and customer comprehension through category level improvements
- Testing ways to increase customer commitment when booking
- Launching more integrations to help you better manage your availability
- Improving booking availability features to give you more flexibility
Keep checking the Community for more specific updates as they roll out. And, please, keep sharing your feedback.
Comments
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Hi Dusti!
While this update is very encouraging, and there is mention of improving the booking availability, there are so many businesses that absolutely cannot use anything close to what Instant Booking currently resembles/costs. In my case, as an Organizer, there is no way to provide an estimate of hours no matter what we receive ahead of time (photos, videos, etc.). The variables in the work that we do are incredible.
An example is unpacking a client home. I could walk in and look at 100 boxes for two different clients
A Moving Company may have used an excessive amounts of packing paper which allows for maybe 2 to 10 items per box. On the other hand, another client may be a paper or clothing hoarder and both customers want everything put away. and organized. In the boxes of the second client, those boxes could hold thousands of sheets of paper of pieces of clothing or 20 to 30 items per box and more. there is no way to provide an estimate.
Many potential clients are coming into Thumbtack because of curiosity and it may sound good initially, but they have second thoughts within hours, or the next day and don’t follow through with the booking. This happens frequently, and yet we are still required to pay for it .
In my case I leave openings on my calendar because I may need a buffer for a client. If every single open day is booked, then if I have a client who needs one or two extra days, I don’t have anywhere to put them for what could be weeks .
There are so many different scenarios I could offer on why instant booking does not work While I see that TT is looking at many different options that go into the booking process, I did not read anything regarding changes to the instant booking function. A business owner need to maintain control of their schedules for very specific reasons. It may work for some businesses, but for many others, as we have all been reading, this does not work.
Thank you for keeping us posted Dusti. For me personally, it has been heartbreaking to read what Instant Booking has done to hundreds of Pros .
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@kostlover “While I see that TT is looking at many different options that go into the booking process, I did not read anything regarding changes to the instant booking function.”
This is what stood out to me as well. The email update a few weeks ago basically said the same thing. Nothing about will we have the option to turn off instant booking and have control of our own calendar again. Which is the most important issue at hand. Everything else is secondary!
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I agree with you guys. Was hoping that while reading @DustiO 's update I would find that they are going to give us the option to turn instant booking off but instead it seems they are just going to adjust some things and make us their test dummies again all at our expense. Bummer. I have a house cleaning business and Instant Book just does not work in so many variables. There is just way too much to assess in a home to give a proper estimate. A lot of people have hoarder/hazard homes that are at least 5x the amount of work and materials and there is no way for any app to assess that. So even if they are "serious" about their booking, they are going to be misled with the pricing that is not setup properly for them because the system cannot capture a lot of important information that I need to asses. Oh well, moving onto other platforms anyway. I will check in another year or so to see if they finally gave up Instant Booking
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@DustiO Aside from the fact that instant book simply does not work for the majority of us, I think the big issue is this- TT thinks/wants to be our only source of leads. They want us to use their integration tools and accept payments thru the app. While some of those things work for some of the Pro's, none of it works for all of us. TT, Facebook, Google are all tools we use in some combination.
It doesn't matter how high I set my max price, TT cant get me enough work to my sole source of jobs. That's why I cant give them control of my schedule.
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It seems like they are addressing anything else other than Instant book and from the poll they took, only TWO percent of people want the IB features.🤦♀️
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@DustiO I would love to connect with the advisory board about the service community here on thumbtack. Thumbtack is one of the only platforms that has a space for travel agents to meet clients. However, there are things that need to be improved to help both pros and clients find the right agents. I've been asking for specific things for quite some time but not sure its being heard since travel agents and other services outside of homecare are not really being marketed. I think that does a disservice to thumbtack as well as they are not differentiating themselves in the market on what they offer compared to angies list or taskrabbit. None of those offer travel agents to people
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@KesXcent I love that you want to get more involved, thank you! We are working on a suggestion box feature here in the Community, but in the meantime I would recommend you continue sending your category specific feedback to support@thumbtack.com to be sure it's getting logged under you/your category.
Also, some of our Pro Advisory Board members regularly join our CommuniTEA sessions if you want to connect with them!
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I was really hoping the update would allow us to get leads without mandatory instant booking , but that does not seem in the works , in fact it looks like the roadmap is doubling down on instant booking - so i guess i will remain shut off -
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Instant book is way over priced I mount TVs this is the first week in months I turn on my marketing I got 1 lead which is an instant book that cost $71.00 on a job that I charge $170 which say high value job lol after cost of gas materials and the monkey wrench instant book throws in my schedule I clear $40 this is why me and a lot of other pros have stop dumping money for leads to this site. Not to mention the joke of a refund policy. At least give us an On/Off switch for instant book so we can have control of our schedules and stop being forced fed over priced leads that only benefit thumbtack. Do better thumbtack and before you say you can adjust your lead prices when you turn it down the leads stop.
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