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New Deal for Pros (Beta)

Conversational design | Thumbtack | 2025

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New around here? Before reading on, get important context on the alpha experience.

The problem...

Once pros receive a job lead through Thumbtack, they're automatically charged for it — even if they can't do the job and decline the lead. Pros don't love this. They hate it very, very much. When a pro declines a lead, we ask them why. Typically, pros use freeform text to respond in a number of different ways. They might tell us things like...

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  • This is a scam

  • I don't have tall enough ladder

  • Can't do it

  • I don't take emergency jobs

  • [Insert bad words]

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In the alpha experience, we built a way to take this feedback and apply it for them using AI. That said, we can only understand certain types of preferences from the pro. We need preferences to be specific and useful. In other words, we can generate a new preference that a pro doesn't take emergency jobs, but we can't generate one for a "tall enough" ladder. In that example, we need to what ceiling height is too high.

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The solution...

We used AI to create a conversational chatbot that helps pros articulate their job preferences. If they decline a lead and give us a reason we can't understand, we use the chatbot (disguised as a non-chatbot experience) to ask questions and get clarity. The AI can also help pros find other resolutions—like changing their location settings. 

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For the beta, I was responsible for creating the prompt that generates the conversation between the AI and the pro. I also built the output evaluation prompt and designed the UX copy.

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The results....

The beta will launch on December 8th, but early signals are looking promising. The next iteration of this project will be a main focal point in the company's 2026 product roadmap. 

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Okay... I still can't share designs.

The NDA will end in December. In the meantime, take a peek at a few of the prototypes I vibed-coded in our design sprint brainstorm that kicked off this work.

In-messenger listening

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My first thought was to go where pros already discuss their job preferences with customers: the in-app messenger. I vibe-coded a brief conversation between a customer and a pro. When a pro mentions a job preference that we can use and apply to their future leads — we pop into the conversation and ask if they'd like to save that preference. The idea is to be a proactive, helpful, and non-creepy third party in their conversation.

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Lead details page

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My second idea was to show "nearly missed" leads on pros' lead details pages. In the baseline experience, they see only the customers they've been matched with. I vibe-coded a filtered experience that instead shows them "all leads" (including those that were just nearly missed) and explains why we didn't send them those leads. The goals here were to reiterate that we are hearing and applying their job preferences in a smart way — and also to lean on their FOMO in case their current job preferences were costing them jobs they actually did want.

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Lead clarification conversation

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This third idea had the most potential. I vibe-coded a conversation between an AI and a pro that would occur directly after they decline a lead. The AI helps them clarify their job preference in an easy way so that we can apply it to leads moving forward. If this looks familiar to what I described in "the solution" section, that's because this is the idea that sparked our formal project. 😉

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