Comparing Booking Inquiries with Direct Leads and Instant Book

Thumbtack_Research

We're only a couple weeks out from closing out the study. Your feedback has been so insightful and has shaped many product ideas the team is considering in order to make booking inquiries work better for both pros and their customers.

As mentioned last week, I'll share some additional opportunities, by Wednesday at the latest, in this group and via email to participate in some 1:1 interviews reflecting on the last 2 months with booking inquiries and a focus group focused on getting your feedback on some early concepts.

Comparison to Direct Leads

• How does your experience with booking inquiries compare to your experience with direct leads?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
• Would you say that you believe that your are more or less confident in the return on investment in booking inquiries vs. direct leads? Why or why not?
• Which do you prefer and why?

Comparison to Instant Book

We know not everyone has used Instant Book—which has been sunset—but, for those who have used it, we'd love to hear answers to similar question. If you haven't had experience with the product, you can ignore this section.

• How does your experience with booking inquiries compare to your experience with Instant Book?

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

• Would you say that you believe that your are more or less confident in the return on investment in booking inquiries vs. instant? Why or why not?

• Which do you prefer and why?

Jyhomerepair1234

I’ve really enjoyed my experience with booking inquiries. As far as comparison goes, the only difference is that you are able to have a dialog with the lead without being charged until the job is booked. Not getting charged before job is confirmed is a huge advantage to me since I only pay for a lead that will generate me money. The disadvantage is that you’re not able to access the customer contact info which slow things down a bit. It has also been a bit confusing to the customers in regards to how to move forward. I get the feedback constantly.
I am definitely way more confident on the return on investment with booking inquiries than I am with direct leads. With direct leads often times you go through your budget quickly and sometimes leads won’t even respond. I say that if I was able to choose a way forward it would be with booking inquiries. Definitely a huge plus for my business.

When it comes to instant book, I was ony booked a couple of times and I didn’t really like it. Even with my calendar up to date there were calendar conflicts with it. Also I want able to discuss pricing with the leads before hand. All in all not a fan of it.

DPDJacob

Like JYhomerepair said overall from the pro side it is an almost identical experience. Only big differences is no visibility to phone number (bad), but we aren't charged until booked (good).

Overall inquiries are guaranteed to be a better ROI. I'm sure like me other pros had plenty of direct leads in the past that went nowhere and that was $10-20 down the toilet.

Overall inquiries are much better in my opinion.

Personally I HATED instant bookings. I only had them on because I always got a pop-up that said if I turned it off I would be less visible. My "solution" was leaving instant bookings on but making my availability only 1 day a week. My biggest complaint with instant books was as a one man show my schedule is constantly changing. I could not keep my Thumbtack calendar up to date, manually or automatically. So 75% of the instant books I got would end up being at a time that I wasn't available. (Partly my fault with the calendar thing, but still frustrating). Inquiries leave the actual scheduling up to the customer and I which works out much better. ROI when comparing the two is again no question, inquiries have a much better ROI. Especially because instant bookings for me were usually $40+.

Inquiries as a whole are leaps and bounds better than direct leads and instant bookings.

Josiah_RPP

For the most part, I do like booking inquiries. It feels a lot better to chat and find out if ANY job is there at all than to pay for a nothing burger of a lead. I will say my biggest downside to all of it was definately with some of my older customers who just did not understand how to book. I wanted to make a phone call with one but he couldn't figure out how to confirm the book with us and we couldn't get on the phone with each other. But other than that I did enjoy it a lot.

Joshua_Harding

Booking inquiries have been a nice improvement to the overall Thumbtack experience. Customers seem to understand why the phone numbers are not available once I explain it, has not been enough of a stumbling block to want anything changed.

Instant Bookings was never a good system, customers would book jobs then have different expectations than the booking the selected, they would often have calendaring issues and overall it lead to disappointed customers and frustrated service providers. All of these friction points seems to be solved with Booking Inquiries.

bloodline

My experience with booking inquiries has been better than expected. I like that I’m able to start a conversation with the customer before taking on the job. Also the other big benefit is not having to pay for the job/ lead right away. I am more confident in my return on investment with booking inquiries. I feel that I was paying for leads I might not have particularly wanted with direct leads.
Instabook was similar to Direct Leads were the customer got to pick the date and time according to your availability. I still prefer Booking Inquiries over both because of the dialogue I can build with the customer. Also, it’s easier to reschedule while communicating and using the call request feature has been more useful recently.

ZEROREZTC

Comparison to Direct Leads

• How does your experience with booking inquiries compare to your experience with direct leads?

Booking inquiries are helpful because you aren’t charged until you know the full details of the job. 

Direct leads are automatically charged when the person inquires about the job. Sometimes clients answer questions we have, sometimes they answer their phone after an inquiry and other times we don’t hear back at all but are still charged. 

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

I’d say they both bring us a steady amount of business. 

Advantages of direct leads is the ability to call the client immediately after the inquiry.

Advantages of booking inquiries is you can discuss the entire job before agreeing to booking with that client and paying for the job lead. 

Disadvantages of direct leads is the fact that we are charged before even having any contact with the client other than their inquiry. The issue with that is a lot of inquiries don’t pan out because they don’t answer our questions or calls. 

Disadvantages of booking inquiries is not having any contact information for the client if they don’t answer the messages on thumbtack. 

• Would you say that you believe that your are more or less confident in the return on investment in booking inquiries vs. direct leads? Why or why not?

I believe that our ROI will be best with booking inquiries because it will give us the opportunity to make sure the job is a good fit and that the scheduling makes the most sense for us and the client. 

• Which do you prefer and why? 

I am caught in between which one I actually prefer, I like the fact that I can discuss the job details and dates with the client previous to paying for the lead, but I also like the fact that we get the clients phone number and we are able to contact them immediately through direct leads. 

Comparison to Instant Book 

We know not everyone has used Instant Book—which has been sunset—but, for those who have used it, we'd love to hear answers to similar question. If you haven't had experience with the product, you can ignore this section. 

• How does your experience with booking inquiries compare to your experience with Instant Book?

My experience was different because I didn’t have a choice with direct leads. When a client booked a direct lead, we were immediately charged. Even in the event of the clients details changing and cancelling the job, we still had to pay for the booking charge. 

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

I truly don’t think that instant bookings had any advantages, it was actually more of a headache. Clients would instant books and our scheduling would be different than our thumbtack scheduling because our proprietary software scheduling changes often and I would not be able to keep up with changing it on thumbtack every single day.. so when would instant book I would have to go call them and see if I could reschedule for a different date instead. 

• Would you say that you believe that your are more or less confident in the return on investment in booking inquiries vs. instant? Why or why not?

I am more confident in the return on investment in booking inquiries because you are able to discuss the job, discuss the total cost with the client and then decide if you want to take the job on before paying for it. 

• Which do you prefer and why?

I hated instant bookings because they took a lot of money and didn’t always give us the job even though it was an “instant booking”