Instant Booking
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I’m not able to change this message. Didn’t you say we could? I don’t want to mislead the client and would like to reword the statement to something more accurate and educational.
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You can't change that one, but the message that comes from you when you confirm the booking is the one you can edit.
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@DustiO Where can the client message us directly as a regular inquiry?
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If they go through the flow and don't want to book a time they can still choose to reach out directly.
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Please show us the flow steps. Can you attach a picture where that is? Thank you
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I don't have a screenshot of it, but just did this with a window cleaner near me. If the customer gets to the available booking times and doesn't want to book any of those times they exit and see the option to message the pro directly.
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Understood. Thank you.
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Instant booking is the single most horrible feature I’ve ever encountered. I don’t know if it was some bone headed not well thought cash grab thumbtack execs thought was a good idea but it wasn’t. I was just charged Almost half what I’d charge a client to instant book just for them to later cancel and the deduct it out your account immediately without giving us a money refund instead it’s credits we might not even get to use in this slow season. Please stop this or I’ll be forced to pause my account until is remedied.
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Here is the main thing, I am totally fine with new features, as long as they are optional. The forcing of it all is the hardest part!
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This is where all pros need to hide their accounts and place them on PAUSE until an action is taken on TT’s part to make this a instant booking BS an OPTION, worst case scenario. I tried instant booking in the past. It simply DOES NOT WORK! It makes scheduling extremely inefficient for any businesses unless the coverage area as reduced significantly to a small radius. Even at that, they are expecting that every job request fits within their ‘standard’ parameters. We all know that we can’t rely solely on TT leads to survive. Just too much blood sucking greed in this neck of the woods.
Alert to Thumbtack!!: WE DO NOT WORK FOR YOU. When it comes down to it, instant booking quite literally removes the ability for Pros to set up their schedules with ALL their appointments efficiently. It also forces Pros into placing TT leads ahead of all their other customers because of being FORCED to abide to the schedule of some anonymous customers(with no guarantee that they’re even real), due to the intimidation that it’l negatively impact the image of their business from a bad review… Truth be told, what this really resembles is a Tech industry form of genocide, disguised by kind words on cpu screens and offering rations of keyboard strokes to communicate, while duct tape over your mouth is now referred to as algorithms. Shadow banning and locked accounts are now the new form of locked up isolation. This is communist methodology at its core.
Once people come to realize what they’re being forced into and how much its going to negatively impact their livelihood, they’ll simply just leave. Common sense proves there is no way this is going to end well, because its simply not a sustainable format for a business to profit from. At the end of the day, TT keeps digging their grave deeper and deeper. A massive exodus of Pros is inevitable if changes aren’t made fast. I will end with this:
GoodBye 👋🏼 and best of Luck to the rest of the hard working Pros!! The Grass is Always Greener….!
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Sad in in the same boat and this is the second transition thumbtack has done to make me not want to use them first was when they started sending leads to unlimited pros at once. Been a customer of thumbtack since the very beginning got me on a cold call. I havnt got a lead in over 3 weeks
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It's sounding a little like Communism to me.
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Angie’s list used to charge the customer. I’ve called thumbtack over the past two years and asked them to at minimum add a check box for customers to acknowledge that they are costing hard working people money and to not proceed unless they are serious. And I always get the @DustiO response “ this is a great suggestion I’ll share it with the team” well two years later they have only managed to come up with a way to charge us more and still leave the customer in the dark about the charges that we incur
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More like authoritarianism.
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You guys are hilarious... moderating my comments in this forum... why? You are getting feedback from YOUR CUSTOMERS and because you don't like it, you delete it?
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@AngelicHousekeeping please review the Community Code of Conduct.
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So I'll keep it simple and make it across several posts...
TT ruined our housekeeping business with the instant booking "feature." We were closing 90% of our leads and now we are paying a lot more for lower quality leads. I worked before, but only if we got repeat business, which my GF was very good at doing.
Dusti... there is no... hey, use the integration tools... or... we are making it better. You should immediately make this feature optional. TT has directly, in a money grab, effectively put us out of business.
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@AngelicHousekeeping this feedback is extremely helpful - specifically about closure/conversion rate. Do you have any numbers you could share around what your closure rate is now vs the 90% you were closing previously? If you don't feel comfortable sharing numbers in this thread, you are welcome to send them to me via DM and I will pass it along. Thank you for reframing your comment, appreciate it.
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I'm having difficulty with the instant book rescheduling. Typically I am able to reschedule for an earlier date that the instant book, due to a cancellation. It won't let me pick an earlier date. The app also suggests 3 dates/times that are supposedly good for me and the client, but when I sent that off the client is still asking me what my availability is/what are the dates and times. Apparently they can't see what I am seeing.
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Dusti... we just aren't going to do it this way... period. We'd rather be charged less, chat with the client, make our offer, decide if it's a fit, schedule with them direct, etc... Like I said, we had a very successful method and got bookings 90% of the time even when up to 3 other pros were contacted.
So we are not going to jockey all these integration tools, pay a ridiculous amount for leads, and have less control over the process. We are just shutting it down.
Keep in mind... you were going to spot light us in some of your marketing materials as a success story for empowering small businesswomen. We were ready to expand and hire another keeper. That is how successful and confident we were in the OLD PLATFORM.
We acquired about 40 clients with TT and I see about 5 additional people who we paid for but have not booked yet. But we are still pinging them once a month or so. I have been able to book leads even 90 days after we thought they were dead, so we keep trying.
So we are going to revisit our old clients while the platform is off while we hope TT will change policy.
Additionally... I can tell you that after 10 weeks on the platform we had gross revenue of $5000 and we paid TT $850 of that. So even as it was... TT was expensive. You've made it more expensive and taken too much control away.
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I am a home inspector in the Seattle area. I also have been a big fan of Thumbtack, recommending it to clients and pro's alike. It was a great way to help get my business established, and offer some help for clients looking for pros. Unfortunately Thumbtack forgot who the client was. I have been a top pro for most of the time I have been on the site. At some point I would have thought Thumbtack would have rewarded me for that. No, but I can access videos to tell me how to get better. I do surveys and say what would help, but those suggestions never happen. The one constant is more expensive, lower quality leads, and less control of my business. Please don't tell me to adjust my max price, or my availability, or how to integrate my calendar. I, like every other pro on this thread, know how to get the most out business. I, like every other pro on this thread, relied on thumbtack for a PORTION of my business. When Thumbtack was satisfied with being a tool to help us, it worked. Once they decided to control our business it no longer works.
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Here is another example of why instant book is not working. I had a client reach out and schedule a time for an estimate, of course I don’t do in person estimates it’s always been virtual. I reach out to the client immediately and let them know I can do all of the work before I arrive remotely. Even though I already spoke with him and walked him through the process, the appointment remained.
I am assuming the client received the same reminder email that I would be on site at the designated time. My client reached out asking if I was coming out, because they were confused since we already had spoken. This is another prime example of how Thumbtack is running our business how they want it to run.
All of this could be avoided if we had the option of turning off instant book. It only makes us pros look bad on initial contact, when we say we only do virtual, even though they booked an “in person” appointment.
Yes, I have already specified in my profile name that I do virtual appointments only, and I let the client know immediately when they book, but it only leads to more confusion when they receive the reminder email for the appointment.
Thumbtack, please listen to the pros and what they need and don’t dictate how we should run our business.
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The Dust and thumbtack doesn’t doing anything after hundreds of us complaining about the instant booking. It is Dead End chat with Dusti ..
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Everyone paused now.. I already paused my
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I’d like to return to the convo to add another problem with Instant booking… Every Pro on TT has had to learn to outsource other leads other than TT. If TT wasn’t such a rip off now, more Pros might even have a positive thing to say about instant booking.
with that said, most Pros have a different schedule that they use for appointments. Having to update and cross reference two separate schedules is extremely inefficient. The TT calendar comes last to our other customers, because we make less money with TT leads. When instant booking is put into place, TT assumes that the calendar is up to date, when often times its not. Nobody has the time to come on the app to block off another calendar, just to prevent new leads from being double booked. Even when an instant booking is made, its often at a time or location that is inconvenient and creates potential conflicts with other appointments that have already been set up in the most efficient way to bring in the most profit w/o wasting time and backtracking.
The majority of the instant booking appointments that we get are actually rescheduled for these reasons. And to make matters even worse is that when a pro receives a notification for an Instant booking, they have the option to Accept the appointment and not message, or accept and send a message. Even if the Pro doesnt confirm/accept the booking(or happen to not see the notification), the customer is still told that the appointment is still on. They even get confirmations and reminders from TT letting them know when the Pro will arrive. All this, without the Pro accepting or acknowledging that They have the appointment?!? Talk about a disaster waiting to happen!
Not only does this create headaches for the Pros, but it potentially sheds a bad light on their business, because TT is essentially making broken promises on their behalf, whether they know about it or not. It’s mind boggling to think that someone in their right mind actually thought this through and seriously anticipated it being a good enough idea to implement it. We Pros know that everyone makes mistakes. But what separates a good business from the others is to own up to the mistakes and make the appropriate corrections to keep moving forward… The obvious thing that irks many Pros about this is the fact that TT clearly knows they made a mistake with this change. But the only thing they’ve done to try to make it right is blame the Pros, w/o taking any accountability.
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@Fix_Fitness this is all really great feedback. On the calendar part — you are able to integrate some CRMs and calendars so that you don't need to be managing more than one calendar. You may already know this, but in case it might be helpful, here is more info on integrations, and here is more info on syncing calendars.
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Ditto!
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This is what the consumer sees now for our service area. The top 5 used to be dominated by businesses that had anywhere from 25 to 500+ hires... and had dozens of 5 star reviews. Look at #2... LOL... 2 hires and wow!!! 12 reivews... not sketchy at all...
TT is shooting themselves in the foot here and they happen to have their foot on ours as pros. Wake up!
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