Tell us about your experience with Booking Inquiries!

Thumbtack_Research

Hi y'all - Thanks again for providing your feedback as part of this group. We'll likely have a few others joining us in the next couple days so stay on the lookout to welcome new folks joining in the intro discussion.

Our prompt this week may feel a bit familiar from last week's, but here is your chance to go into a little more depth on this topic.

One additional guideline to make this discussion as productive as possible:

Please reply to at least one other person's post—you can +1 if what they've shared resonates with you; you can ask questions to get more details; share tips about what has helped you be more effective with booking inquiries.

Prompt:

• Pros and Cons:
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of the current booking inquiry system vs. direct leads?
• Tips and Tricks
  • Have you discovered any ways that help you be more effective with booking inquiries? What are they and how do they work?
• Desired Improvements
  • What specific improvements would you like to see implemented in the booking inquiry process?
  • How would these changes improve your experience?

Thanks! Looking forward to hearing from you all!

Sebastian

Joshua_Harding

Advantage to booking inquiry has to be the ability to verify with the customer this is a good fit for my business. This can involve so much more than just price, things like scope of work, timeline for project completion, and general opportunity for Q&A. Disadvantage, so far my actual lead count has dropped way off. I suspect this has to do with the beta and most of my other service providers on the old system.

Improvement, please make a way for customers to share product links. The filter currently blocks all incoming links so it has been a challenge sharing what they would like assembled or installed.

DPDJacob

I mean let's be honest first major pro is that the pros aren't charged until the customer books 👍

Con in my opinion is not having access to the customers phone number. I always reply in the app first, but I have had situations where it was an older customer and the only way I could get a hold of them was by a phone call. But I also understand in the interest of customer privacy plenty of people don't want their phone number out there.

Personally don't have any tips and tricks to share. I've had 3 booking inquiries so far and none have led to jobs. Like Joshua said the amount of leads has dropped significantly since I turned booking inquiries on.

I can't think of any specific improvements other than phone number visibility. Like I said above sometimes a phone call is the only way to actually get a hold of people. And unless the customer books with us we can no longer see their number.

Josiah_RPP

So far I have enjoyed using booking inquiries, but honestly, I just have not gotten many of them. Thumbtack has been rather slow for me over the last 2 weeks especially as work as dried up in my area.

I do like the feature though, its nice to be able to consider a job before paying for it.

bloodline

Pros of the booking inquiries is getting the details of the job and receiving information directly from the customer. Also, not paying for leads until the customer has booked you for a job. Biggest con is not getting any contact information from the customer and texting/messaging being the only way to communicate.
I feel the biggest trick to being successful with inquiries is responding quickly. Being the 1st or 2nd to respond to a booking inquiry gives you a better chance to win the job. Or responding under 30 mins to someone who has “picked only you” even though I think the customer picks more than one pro anyway.
I have had over 10 bookings and had over 700 views since the booking inquiries feature started. Another effective tip I have noticed is ending my response with a question to the customer to keep the conversation going.
The main improvement I would like to see is that the reasons why you(pros) would decline a job. It’s not enough options so sometimes I don’t even bother to select an option

Cash

I agree that the booking inquiry system is a great feature to the thumbtack app I think it allows you to build a rapport with the customer and get to know the customer more on a personal level in a lot of ways before you show up in their house and do something to their home or whatever they have the project may be so I think it's a very good thing to add as a feature and it also just it really increases my job production because most of the time I'm on a low budget that I only get a few leads a week so by the booking inquiry being available I can chat with a customer and I can sell myself and the service better by being able to communicate with them directly with a chat service and so the burking inquiry system is great and I'm glad that it's been implemented i'm going to be sad that when it goes away and I feel like that it will dramatically decrease my lead generations but 90% of the people that have come to me I have got a the job from the lead or job from the inquiry

Jnsthilaire

For us the greatest advantage of booking inquiries has been knowing if the job is right for us. Most people are very unfamiliar with pest control and don't know what details to include. Starting a chat and being able to ask all the questions we need to before paying allows us to pick all the right jobs.

The main con, like I said in all my video responses is that I feel the payment percentage per lead can be very high. In my business most of the money comes from retaining a customer and having them sign on to be a quarterly client. If the issue they're having is one that makes it hard to sign them up then the almost 50% payment hurts profits by a large margin.