Continuing to lower Customer budget options without regard for Pro ROI

[ScottArcangel]

In today's Jobs Tab -

Matthew C in Jim Thorpe PA wants to hire a 5-person wedding band for an 8 hour gig for under $300.

Already ridiculous. The fee to bid on this gig is $33.05. 

$300-taxes-TT fee / 5 people / 8 hours = $5.50 per hour per professional musician

(not including set up time or any actual business expenses)

That's like 33% of the $15 minimum wage that's being proposed nationally for entry-level employees with zero training - let alone professionals with multiple degrees in their field.

It should be easy enough when Customers select certain filters - to not allow them to select other filters. Like - if they want 5 people to work for 8 hours, then they can't select the budget option of "less than $300"

That should be incredibly easy from an engineering standpoint. And I don't believe for a second that nobody brings up points like these when TT decides to continue to give customers lower and lower budget options. 

It's so much easier to fix these types of issues in the design phase, rather than implement them at the cost of taking advantage of Pros and waiting to see if enough people complain.

If not addressed - the long term result will be in only unqualified "Pros" who are untrained or "not in it for the money" types of pros.

I certainly wouldn't hire an electrician/lawyer/home inspector who was willing to work for $5 an hour!

Continuing to lower customer budget options lowers the entire market, and will destroy Pro's ROI - until it's just another cheap marketplace with crappy "pros" who do shoddy work.

[MR]

@ScottArcangel   Agreed completely. A pretty high percentage of the leads I wind up talking to from TT balk at my initial ask for a $1000 retainer (which is actually low for my area)  to work on their divorce case, but then when I dig deeper, they say they have no funds and wonder if I can finance their dovorce. When I ask if they can get a loan or borrow from a family member they say they have a poor credit rating and would not be able to get a loan... so... no deal there from me. I m certainly not going to finance a divorce case.

From my experience, TT is now attractive to a tier below the cost-concious buyer.

[Hankster]

@ScottArcangelThumbtack caters now to their customers who are looking for all the bells & whistles for whatever service they need along with paying a price that they are willing to pay. Not what they should expect to pay for a service. That's because Thumbtack has never educated their customers in the 10 plus years, they have been in business on what their customers should expect to pay for ANY service they are looking for. I suggested this 4 weeks ago to get rid of the budget question https://community.thumbtack.com/t5/Find-more-jobs/The-Budget-Question-Has-Changed/m-p/27191#M2605 Supposedly all suggestions & feedback goes into a robust feedback system that Thumbtack has. I'm not sure where on the list this suggestion is but I'm eagerly anticipating that this suggestion would seriously be considered & the process begin to implement this change sooner rather than later. Or as I've seen with other suggestions I've made over the years never at all. I’ve never had any suggestions even considered in the past, so I have valid reasons for my skepticism.

Hankster 7/28/19

[ScottArcangel]

@Hankster 

Sure - agreed.

And really, "educating" the customer will only go so far - they are still going to try to get as low a price as possible (understandably).

However - Thumbtack could easily build in safety features to protect it's Pros (i.e. their paying customers) from being taken advantage of both by bargain-shopping consumers and by policies that don't look out for the Pros. 

Once the ROI is gone - the quality Pros will be as well.

[Hankster]

Good point @ScottArcangel. Maybe one day we'll see this actually happen.

Hankster 7/28/19

[MR]

I would agree that very little ever changes in ways that matter to pros. I made a fix request such that the mobile app display not only the time we sent past messages to a lead, but the Date As well. Currently only a time is displayed. Seems like an easy fix and one TT would prioritize as being important. I made that request a couple of months ago and sent them screen shots. To date nothing has been fixed even after a handful of app updates. Really a poor track record on display there.
Maybe now that they have additional funding ????

[ScottArcangel]

@MR 

It's hard to gauge what will be a priority for Thumbtack, in terms of what actually gets addressed.

Every now and then they do seem to implement something that Pros have been asking for.

Many of the updates seem to be testing out processes/changing the way everything works... 

I would guess, that because they have changed the overall format of the system a number of times, some of the tech/engineering stuff that we assume should be minor and an easy fix, may be very low priority... 

Frustration is one thing, and annoyances do pile up. But when I see things that have a major impact on my ROI, then it moves from annoying to concerning to changing what gig sites I invest my time & $$ in.

I've had great success on Thumbtack, and would really really like for it to continue.

[Mustang]

I appreciate the general reasoning. 

For me, I like seeing the budget information... EXCEPT the "I don't know" option is horrible as currently implemented.

In my case, there would be a huge difference between a "I don't know, but I would guess it's under $1K" and a "I don't know, but would assume it is over $1K"

There has got to be a way to improve this.

- Mustang Int'l

[taylor]

@ScottArcangel Thank you for continually providing us your feedback. As @Hankster pointed out, our feedback system is quite vast. We've been taking in feedback from all avenues and working to prioritize each issue. It can take us time to implement suggestions as there are many processes that have to be considered when moving forward with a piece of feedback. Remember not every piece of feedback we receive will be applied in the end. We understand your frustration with the customer budget. You may not be able to take jobs that are under a certain budget. We see that your preferences are set to reflect that currently. Leads that are below that budget are sent to you so you can choose to accept them if you wish, but you'll have the option to opt-out of these leads. We can definitely voice your concerns about educating customers about pro budgets add that to the existing feedback on the subject. We appreciate you all sharing your thoughts on the matter. 

[ScottArcangel]

Thanks @taylor  - appreciate your response. One key point -

"We can definitely voice your concerns about educating customers about pro budgets add that to the existing feedback on the subject."

That is not what I'm asking, so please don't lump it in with the other "customer education" thoughts. I'm saying DON'T educate the customers. That won't work anyway. Customer education will not work.

The ability to protect your Pros from being taken advantage of should just be built into the system, by not giving them the option of asking me to work for $5.50 an hour.

Yes, right now my options are to either-

1. Lower my ROI by lowering my prices to meet Thumbtack's newly lowered customer budget

2. Lower the amount of leads I get, by opting out of leads from that customer budget in my preferences

Either way, it's less profitable for me. Combined with crazy algorithms, it is terrible for business.

Somehow I'm 7th in my marketplace, in spite of having more than twice as many hires and almost twice as many 5-star reviews as 5 of the Pros ahead of me, combined! And a 11 minute average response time.

Yet I will continue to hurl my thoughts into the vast feedback system, with the hopes that they will eventually be addressed and that a system will prevail where Thumbtack, the Pros, and the customers can all win.

Thanks!