Chime In - Thumbtack Should Work For The Pros, Not Against

Other fellow business owners - please chime in as I feel many of us share the same sentiment.

I recently reactivated my Thumbtack pro account as I'm experiencing a rather slow season at the moment and was hopeful that maybe Thumbtack made some better changes to the platform. However, I'm quickly finding it's still not all that great for quality lead generation. Big emphasis on quality. I personally feel that Thumbtack makes the platform more user friendly on the consumer end, but not the professional end. Since consumers don't need to pay to use the platform, the platform should actually be working in the professional's favor to help win & close more qualified leads. Some of my personal suggestions:

• Allow synced Google Reviews as new reviews role in. Not just once. Not all businesses rely solely on Thumbtack for leads and many acquire reviews outside of the platform on their Google business listings. I keep getting notifications that I need more reviews to be seen more- yet Thumbtack won't let me sync new reviews.
• Encourage prospects to provide as much information as possible when contacting a pro. If we're already getting charged the lead, I need to see detailed information when I open the message. Not just a few words. Especially in my field of work (interior design). I need to know more than just "I need help with my living room".
• The Bark platform features a question where prospects can choose their likeliness to hire a professional (i.e. just looking, ready to hire now, etc.) that Thumbtack can easily implement as well. Adding to that, I'd like a more detailed questionnaire for interior design services or at least more clarity with the current questions. I'm not sure if it already is this way, but when it comes to the budget question, it needs to be obvious that the question is asking either "What is your design fee budget?" AND "What is your furniture and/or construction budget?" OR "What is your overall project budget? This includes design fees, furniture, construction, labor, etc."
• Implement a 15 minute (or however long) period of time before the client can contact another pro. State this before a client chooses to contact their first pro. This would require them to actually research the pros they contact, thus eliminating tire kickers for us. They would mostly likely choose the first pro as their #1 choice, which in turn would be a more qualified lead for that pro and lead to a better chance of communicating and closing that lead. After 15 mins, they can choose to get a quote from another pro if they so wish. This isn't eliminating the consumer's options, but forcing them to carefully consider their options and allowing each pro enough time to communicate and connect.
• If not the above, then continuously reminding consumers to reach back out to the pros they've inquired for. I think many pros here would be agree that many of these leads simply do not respond at all. We don't want our time AND money wasted on tire kickers. Whether it's sending out constant reminders in the app, email, texts or push notifications to the phone- remind them, a lot lol. Even if they have already gone with another pro, have a pop up ask them if they have already hired someone, so the system can let the other pros know to close the inquiries on their end.

In summary, Thumbtack needs to work on bringing qualified leads to their paying pros, not forcing us to work with low quality leads that were probably never going to hire anyone in the first place. I think there's lots of potential with the platform, but still a long way to go.