Questions about Thumbtack phone numbers? We’re here to help.

Will the Thumbtack tracking numbers eventually link back to the system? As in, when I call from a registered number, will thumbtack's system eventually register that as a contact and stop emailing me so many times telling me that the customer is still waiting to be contacted? I'm also wondering how long till that can be used in the lead disputes as promised?

want to have real phone numbers for the expensive thumbtack leads

Thumbtack numbers is starting impact my conversion rate. This has to be one of the worst ideas I have ever seen. Like many others in the comments starting to work to migrate out of this platform if it doesn't revert back. I am paying for the lead (north of almost 10k per year) and frankly this is not good for business. Calls are now being recorded? Do the clients know this? In my one connect of out of the 20 plus no contacts the customer said they never consented to have their call recorded.

You are better off putting back the way it was. If you keep anything keep the refund if the client makes no contact and not 72 hours 48 hours because if they are serious about booking conversion happens in the first 24 hours.

This must have been a significant initiative internally. Had you anticipated this kind of response from YOUR customers (Pros)? Our customers don't like it. We don't like it. Other Pros don't like it.
That's a big miss.
I wish you all had reached out to more Pros first. Sorry to be the one to inform you, Thumbtack does not have the maket dominance of Amazon, which obscures customer data from third-party retailers that sell on their Marketplace. Selling on Amazon Marketplace has put countless small (and even some large) retailers out of busniess. Is that really the path Thumbtack aspires to follow?

One Admin/Moderator on here wrote they had "personally spoken with pros who have had positive experiences with Thumbtack Numbers and are excited about the opportunities they create." I'm really interested to hear what those opportunities are for Pros (other than refunds) and genuinely shocked that any Pro using Thumbtack would support this concept. I'll take the refunds for nonresponses without having to dispute each automated refund denial, but Thumbtack didn't have to obscure customer data from Pros to do that.

Our text messages (90% of customer communication) already flows through our CRM via desktop/app, then Twilio, and now forwarded to Thumbtack's proxy number and on to the customer? I'm not comfortable routing all messages for the life of the customer relationship through Thumbtack.

As a result, we'll play by your rules for the refund period. Then we'll explain to new customers that Thumbtack obscures their number from us so they can track and monitor our communication, and we'll ask new customers for their number so we can communicate directly. Thumbtack won't gain any long-term data or stickiness, at least not from us. But this change is forcing conversations between Pros and their customers about how Thumbtack is just another evil tech company.

Not to mention technical issues. Lag times. Customers that want to save our number in contacts. 10DLC registration/compliance. CRM integration. It was already a challenge that you don't collect/share the property address so we can quickly refine a quote and check availability. Now we have to ask for the address and phone number.

Look forward to hearing how Thumbtack responds. In the meantime, we'll continue shifting our customer acquisition spend to other platforms. We're not closing our account, so we'll still show up in your count of active users, and I doubt you'll see a mass exodus. We'll just spend less on Thumbtack and more elsewhere. That (and the increased refunds that used to be denied) will show up in your financials months from now, long after the damage is done.

Senior leaders, investors, and board members would be wise not to wait for that and to take action now.

 My company formed in 1997 and we've been a 'Thumbtack Pro' since 2017. Early on, we were very pleased, and overall, our Thumbtack experience has been positive and productive. However, lately I think the 'visionaries' at Thumbtack have an overabundance of ambition and an underabundance of wisdom. So many organizations like Thumbtack are made of immensely ambitious and talented people, but they fall into the loop of pressure to be relentlessly innovative. Folks, sometimes old school wisdom has merit. The old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a worthy way to keep yourselves in check. I beg you to consider this... I ask you, if you were a restaurant with a wildly popular successful dish, that people really liked, would you keep changing the recipe? I think not. So why then do you keep changing the Thumbtack experience? I doubt the recent changes are by popular demand. I'm sure you want Thumbtack to be the best product possible, but continuously changing a good thing doesn't bring 'added value'. If you keep making changes you will eventually get diminishing returns and sometimes outright negative results. Sometimes the best leadership is the wisdom of knowing when to leave a good thing alone. The Pros and the customers need a consistent, reliable experience that is predictable and trustworthy.

Let's talk about "Thumbtack Numbers". Your pitch is that it brings added value, because it allows Thumbtack to have better contact analytics of customer/pro interactions. Sound like the "added value" is for you. However, you also claim we will benefit because customers responded better and faster to Thumbtack numbers. You also offer that we will get a credit if the customer does not respond to any of the pros. 

Let's break down some of the problems:

A) In our experience, the number of customers that didn't respond to any pros is statistically almost zero, making this not a compelling addition of value.

B) We didn't ask for this feature. We thought the original format with real phone numbers worked fine. We should at least have the option to OPT OUT of the Thumbtack Numbers feature. If you intend to keep the feature, please consider giving Pros the ability to opt out. You could even limit the opt out ability to Top Pros if you wanted. I think we have proven over 9 years of Thumbtack success that we do just fine without this 'feature' and we don't need extra help from you.

C) You might say "Give it a chance." We already had an opportunity to test Thumbtack numbers and compare it to real numbers, because part of our market is in Georgia where you ran a pilot program to test the Thumbtack Numbers. Our data show better results when we have the customer's real number, as opposed to a Thumbtack Number. Contrary to your claim, we do not find that the customers respond better or faster with the Thumbtack Number.

D) Serious Potential Problems with the Calls: We don't want to be identified as 'Thumbtack' or 'Thumbtack Pro' when calling a customer! We are proud of who we are, and the reputation we have built. We don't want to blend in, we want to stand out! Consider this... a customer chooses 4 pros from the Thumbtack platform. They looked at the reviews and profiles of all 4 pros, and they really like 2 in particular, more than the others. Perhaps they hope one or both of the 2 they prefer will reach out. If the calls of all 4 pros look the same, they 1) Can't tell if the same pro is calling back multiple times, or if it's a different pro. 2) Can't avoid a pro they already talked to and didn't like. 3) Can't look specifically for the calls from the pros they are hoping for, or haven't heard from yet. 4) Will prematurely experience call fatigue, as 'Thumbtack' continues to call them, instead of receiving different calls from individual pros. This means they are far less likely to talk to pros after the first call, because they can't tell the calls apart. 

E) We can't tell who's calling us either, so when "Thumbtack User" calls in, we are less prepared to field the call, and we appear incompetent and unprepared. Ultimately we have to apologize for the clunky interaction, and for Thumbtack's inexplicable phone number nonsense.

F) Ultimately, we end up exchanging contact info with customers anyway, so your 'feature' is just an impediment that makes us less efficient.

G) As mentioned by others, one of your biggest lead generating competitors, Angi/Homeadvisor, tried this technique with masked internal numbers, and eventually it was abandoned. There are so many practical real world reasons why 'Thumbtack Numbers' just doesn't work as well as real numbers.

Is there a possible compromise? If you don't want us to have the option to opt out, and you are dead set on keeping this 'feature', at the very least integrate our Pro identities into the call ID that the customer receives, so they can tell us apart, and give us some kind of customer identification when the call us.

In summary, like many others, we are unfortunately having to evaluate whether a continued relationship with a "Thumbtack Numbers" version of Thumbtack is a future we want.