Ongoing experience with booking inquiries pt. 2
Welcome back! Thanks for making it more than halfway through our beta testing program. In our next invite, I'll send out a link to sign up for 30 minute optional 1:1 interviews to check in on your experience in detail. Please feel free to take until Tuesday of next week to complete this entry.
Ongoing experience with Booking Inquiries
In the meantime, we'd love to continue to hear about the booking inquiries feature—if there's anything new you've noticed in terms of changes to the product experience or your perception of it, please let us know.
Signals of customer readiness and commitment
Also this week, we'd also love to know a little bit more about how you assess whether a customer that reaches out to you is serious about getting a job done on Thumbtack.
- How do you currently assess a customer's readiness to make a hire?
- What specific actions or behaviors indicate to you that a customer is serious?
- What challenges do you face in gauging customer seriousness?
Product Improvements
- What information or tools would help you better assess customer readiness?
Comments
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Ongoing Experience
I got an inquiry this last week where the customer had attached some pictures. I could not see the pictures until I replied to the inquiry. The customers first message back was "Did you not see the pictures"? So that definitely needs to be fixed. Not sure why I couldn't see the pictures, but those should be visible before we even reply to the customer. Maybe I just missed the pictures, but I don't think I did.
In terms of customers readiness a big green flag for me is how quickly the customer responds. Very responsive customers usually end up going through with the job. If they take hours to respond they are usually just price shopping.
Other than that it can be difficult to gauge a customers readiness.
Only tool I could think of is maybe having some sort of visibility to a "customer profile". Where it would show us a brief customer history on Thumbtack. This customer has sent out X amount of booking inquiries/direct leads. Out of those they have X amount of confirmed hires. Customer has been on Thumbtack for X amount of time. Etc etc. My thoughts are if they are a long time customer with 5 confirmed hires they are likely more ready to hire versus someone who just signed up on Thumbtack and this is their first booking inquiry.
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Well I think that the thumbtack platform is a great platform and I think it's overall user-friendly and allows the pro to Taylor their needs as far as what they're available for what their skill set is and where their location is I think the customer being able to pick that individual based on those metrics allows them to have a sense of control and helps them make the decision to contact us now I think that the way that I assess that information is the way and willingness that they display to talk about their project how much they know in detail and how fast they respond to the messages via the instant booking messaging system it also allows them to send pictures and be very specific about what they need done because I found in the past that when we get direct lead and they have a project you know they may or may not be able to send pictures and in that in that form of communication but it seems like the instant booking is very familiar based on the like current software that we use into society like messenger and all the different ways we contact each other and communicate I think it feels more natural for the younger child now older people which tend to be my main customer base they're a little more wanted instantly give me their number and which that doesn't allow them to send the number through but I think that overall it's a success and I'm mad about a 90% lead to job metric right now so 90% of the people that contact me via institute I have turned into a long-term job or long-term customer and it only take that one time for me to go work and do good work and then I only have to use the thing anymore they just contact me directly so I think that's where I'm at with everything
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Response time is just as important to us as it is to them. Thinking someone may be shopping around allows me to put that inquiry on the backburner. Scheduling around a "maybe" can change how my whole day or week plays out.
I cover almost all of Central Florida and having someone message me but seem like they arent worth the travel time or product cost is huge for me. I had someone with an 11 room vacation rental contact me (and a few other pros) who seemed to just want the cheapest service. After it took a full 24 hours for a reply they had to be put on low priority.
I also agree with DPDJacob, the pictures loading after can really make it seem like you aren't paying attention.2 -
I also agree with DPDJacob regarding the customer attached photos, This seems like a bug and if not certainly something that should be changed.
I would also like to know when it shows "Customer Only Selected You" if that is just for Booking Inquires or for both systems. I have had several leads that never ever read my reply let alone responded and that is odd behavior if they really only selected my profile.
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Quick little update. I got an inquiry earlier today and the pictures were visible immediately. So hopefully it's already been fixed. Keep an eye on it Joshua and Jnsthilaire 👍
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so far I continue to enjoy the booking inquiry option, I’ve had so many leads recently and it’s great to know that you are able to secure the business or the lead fee is not charged. We still see how the leads are having issues understanding how to get the booking going, and they keep sharing some frustration about how the call request works. There’s definitely some work to do to iron out all of the kinks.
As far as knowing when a lead is serious about booking, it depends on a few factors. I feel like how fast a lead reaches out after you’ve introduced yourself is a good sign as well as how engaged in the conversation. Some people barely respond back or hardly engage in a conversation and those are likely to not be serious about booking.
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Ware we at in the study people in lost as last years Easter egg.. im trying get the last part of the payment ..I email Sebastian.. let me know
Thanks
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Thanks Cash for checking in! We have this week's post and next week's before we close out the study. Please see the schedule in the intro post for further details.
Like I mentioned last week, in addition to this forum, I'll share an opportunity to participate in both some 1:1 interviews to reflect on the booking inquiries experience before we close out and then another opportunity to participate in a focus group that will be more focused on early concepts the team is interested in getting your feedback on.
I'll share these at the latest by Wednesday of this week. Thanks again for everyone's feedback and suggestions so far!
Best,
Sebastian
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I assess a customers readiness to hire by how fast they respond. Usually if I can engage with a customer right away more than likely I can win the job. The most specific action/behavior that indicates a customer is serious is asking what form of payment do I accept. I haven’t faced challenges in gauging customer seriousness yet.
I think a nice improvement to assess customer readiness is showing a history of the customer. For example how many pros have they worked with in the past. Also being able to rate the customer someway would help.
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