Showing results for "Business App"

Reputation Management users can easily edit and update their business profile information without being redirected outside of the application. Why is editing your business profile in Reputation Management important? This makes editing the business profile information even easier and quicker with an edit link right on the Primary Listings page within Reputation Management.  How does editing your business profile from Reputation Management work? Go to Business App > Reputation Management > Listings > Edit to open the business profile and update the information as necessary. After updating, click the Save button at the bottom of the page.     

The Inbox Messages tab in the Business App can be turned off from appearing to your clients in Business App - either on a user by user basis, or for all of your accounts within a market. WARNING: Removing user access to Inbox will also remove your users ability to use Inbox Pro, Lead capture or SMS messaging features - and is not recommended. To disable Inbox for a specific subset of users: Navigate to Partner Center > Accounts > Manage Users. Click on the checkboxes to select the user(s) you want to modify their feature access > click on 'Bulk Update x users'.   3. Under the 'Tab Access' settings > click the drop-down arrow next to ''Inbox Messages'' and select ''Turn Off," then Apply Changes to Users. To turn Inbox off for all users within a market, the Customize Business App area in Partner Center: 1. Navigate to Partner Center > Accounts > Manage Business App > Customize Business App > Inbox 2. Uncheck "show this page" and click save, to completely remove Inbox features from all clients within a market.

What are Partner-Made Automation Templates? Streamline Your Workflow with Reusable Automation Templates! By creating templates you can empower your clients to leverage pre-built automation structures. You and your clients can easily customize the automations from the templates to save time, and standardize workflows. How to Build an Automation Template Step 1 - Navigate to Partner Center > Automations > Templates > Manage Client Templates. OR Navigate to Partner Center > Administration > Customize Business App.  Step 2 - Click on the Automations tab, and then select Templates.  Step 3 - Click Create, or choose an existing template to update (Please note that you will not be able to update the Vendasta-made templates that have the "Platform" tag). Step 4 - Create an automation. Step 5 - Use the toggle on the top right-hand side of the page to publish the template. Please note: These templates are strictly for your clients, and your clients will not be able to create templates for themselves.   

Note: This article covers the Pipeline setup in Business App. To learn more about the Pipeline in Partner Center, click here. A sales pipeline mirrors your sales process, with each stage symbolizing a critical step toward closing a deal. While you can adjust stages whenever necessary, carefully designing a pipeline that aligns with your strategy is key. A well-structured pipeline not only provides clarity but also fosters consistent success, guiding your team through each essential phase of the sales journey. Setting Up Your Pipeline   When you visit the Opportunities page for the first time, you’ll see the option to Set up a pipeline. Clicking this button creates a pipeline with default stages, which you can tailor to match your sales process. In this setup, you have the flexibility to: Add New Stages: Click Add Stage to incorporate additional stages. Remove Stages: Remove stages that don’t fit your process by clicking the “X” on each stage. Stages are arranged according to their Close Probability to help forecast potential revenue by estimating the likelihood of closing deals at each stage. Note that Closed Won and Closed Lost are default stages, so they can’t be removed, and additional stages cannot have a 0% or 100% Close Probability. Adding or Removing Pipelines You can create multiple pipelines to support diverse sales processes: Add a New Pipeline: Click Create Pipeline to set up an additional pipeline. There’s no limit to the number of pipelines you can create. Remove a Pipeline: To delete a pipeline, click Delete next to the pipeline. Make sure no opportunities are assigned to it, as any unassigned opportunities from a deleted pipeline will become unattached. With these features, you can build a pipeline that accurately reflects your sales strategy, empowering your team to navigate each sales stage with precision and focus.

What is the AI Voice Receptionist? The AI Voice Receptionist is a total voicemail replacement, enabling businesses to answer calls 24/7 with an AI-powered receptionist. This feature ensures businesses never miss another call, even outside of business hours. The AI Voice Receptionist can: Answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) Capture contact details Send a detailed call summary to the business for follow-up Customers no longer need to leave voicemails or face unanswered calls, improving their experience and reducing the chance of them turning to competitors. Availability Please note that this feature is currently in Open Beta.  Voice AI is an early and evolving technology. It can perform incredibly well in many scenarios, but also might experience some less than ideal conversations. We are excited to bring big improvements over time as you and your customers experience Voice AI. This feature is currently available for businesses based in the USA and Canada that have activated Inbox Pro and been assigned a phone number.  Why Choose the AI Voice Receptionist? When a business is busy or unavailable, they still want new leads and customers to be taken care of quickly without making them wait. Before:A caller reaches out to a business, but if the call isn’t answered, it might go to voicemail or simply ring indefinitely. This often leads to customer frustration and missed opportunities, as leads go to the next business that answers the phone. Now:With the AI Voice Receptionist, every call receives an answer—24/7. Even if the business cannot respond immediately, the AI voice receptionist: Represents the business professionally Answers questions Captures the caller’s request and contact information for follow-up Key Features Always Available – The AI receptionist answers the phone any time of day, even during holidays or after business hours. This allows some businesses to set their business hours to be open longer.  The AI can also answer multiple calls simultaneously, allowing you to capture more leads without anyone getting a busy signal. Multi-Language Support – Supports multiple languages including English, French, Spanish, German, Tagalog, Hebrew, Chinese and many more. Note: Multi-lingual capabilities are in beta, and results may vary. Answer FAQs – The AI receptionist is trained with business-specific knowledge, enabling it to answer detailed questions about products, services, hours of operation, and more. This saves time for both staff and customers by providing immediate responses. Lead Capture – The AI understands caller requests and gathers their contact information, ensuring businesses can follow up efficiently. Call Recordings and Transcripts – All calls are logged in the CRM with recordings, transcripts, and summarized action items for easy review by the business team. Customizable Personality – Tailor the AI receptionist’s personality to align with your brand. Whether you prefer a calm and professional tone or a bubbly and playful demeanor, it’s up to you. Configurable Conversations – Control how the AI handles calls: Decide how it answers the phone Specify FAQs it can address Redirect callers to specific resources (e.g., website for reservations) How to Set Up and Use the AI Voice Receptionist Ensure Eligibility: AI Voice call receptionist is available to users of Inbox Pro in USA or Canada. Ensure an active phone number is assigned to the account. (Note: A2P registration is not required to start using calling features on the assigned phone number.) Enable the AI Voice Receptionist: Go to Business App > AI Workforce > AI Voice Receptionist > Configure. Check on “Phone call: Answer with Voice AI” and hit save. Test the default Voice Receptionist by calling your assigned number. Customize the AI Receptionist: Assign a custom name to the AI. Update business knowledge to ensure accurate database from which it can lookup answers. Add 'additional instructions' for common caller scenarios: Example: IMPORTANT: When you answer the phone, say "Hello...." Example: “If someone asks about reservations, direct them to [website.com].” Example: “If someone inquires about sending a fax, provide... relevant instructions.” Set a business phone number to forward missed calls to your AI Voice number A business can work with their phone provider to forward missed or busy calls to your Voice AI receptionist.  Many phone providers have instructions on how to do this. Some examples: United States AT&T Business: Manage Call Forwarding Landline Call Forwarding Call Forwarding User Guide Verizon Business: Call Forwarding: Everything You Need to Know Call Forwarding - Verizon Business Digital Voice T-Mobile Business: Call Forwarding Support Sprint Business: Self-service short codes for Call Forwarding Canada Bell Business:  How to use Call Forwarding on my mobile phone Rogers Business: Rogers Wireless Call Forwarding Telus Business: Call Forwarding SaskTel Business: Call Forwarding Note: A business may experience additional charges from their phone provider for call forwarding. Frequently Asked Questions 1. What happens if the AI cannot answer a caller’s question? If the AI cannot answer a caller’s question, it will capture the caller’s details and pass the inquiry to the business for follow-up. This ensures no leads or customer concerns are missed. 2. How accurate is the AI at answering FAQs? The AI is trained with the business’s knowledge base and FAQs. The open beta preview is highly capable, but you may see unexpected behavior. Accuracy will also depend on how well the business provides up-to-date and comprehensive information during configuration. TIP: Don't give the AI too much knowledge to draw from; it currently performs best when it's been given only highly relevant, specific information that it will need for common phone interactions. TIP: For best performance answering common questions, add instructions to the 'Additional Instructions' area of the Voice AI configuration, since this information is available for the AI to use in its answers without needing to "look up" anything.  Common questions like pricing, services, FAQs can be added there. 3. Can I choose which languages my AI receptionist speaks? Yes, businesses can enable specific languages for the AI receptionist based on their audience. Many common languages are supported, and the voice AI can switch into a different language at a caller's request. Multi-language support is currently in beta, so results may vary. TIP: To instruct your AI to answer calls y default in another language, add this to the 'additional instructions': "IMPORTANT: Begin all calls by speaking [language], and say: "Bonjour..." 4. How do I listen to call recordings and review transcripts? Call recordings and transcripts are accessible through the Inbox and the CRM.  New calls will appear in Inbox, and be logged on the contact activity in the CRM.  Users will be notified about new calls via Email and App notifications. 5. Can the AI receptionist handle multiple calls at the same time? Yes, the AI receptionist can manage multiple calls simultaneously, ensuring no caller is left waiting. 6. Can I update my AI receptionist’s script and knowledge base after setup? Absolutely! You can update the AI’s script and business knowledge at any time by revisiting the configuration settings in the AI Workforce section. 7. Is there a limit to how long the AI can engage with a caller? During the beta, there is a 5 minute call limit. When a call reaches 5 minutes, it will end without warning. 8. Does the AI receptionist work with existing business phone systems? The AI receptionist works with any phone number assigned through Inbox Pro. It can also receive calls forwarded from other phone systems. It does not integrate directly with third-party phone systems at this time. 9. Can the AI redirect calls to a human representative? Not currently, the AI will capture contact details and then send a notification to business users, for them to follow up via Inbox (send a text) or return their call. 10. How much does the AI Voice Receptionist cost? The AI Voice Receptionist is included with Inbox Pro subscriptions. To allow everyone to experience this feature, we are currently providing 300 minutes of call time with your Inbox Pro subscription!  In the future, there will be per-minute billing options to fit each business's needs. 11. Can I remove the "This call is being recorded" message at the beginning of the AI Voice Receptionist calls? This notification is a legal requirement in Canada and many US states. In the future, we might look at allowing individuals to opt-out by letting them assume all legal risk, but at this time the notification will remain in place for all use. Leverage the AI Voice Receptionist to ensure every call gets answered, customers feel valued, and no leads slip through the cracks. Activate it today to elevate your business’s customer service and efficiency!

This article covers opportunities in Business App. To learn more about opportunities in Partner Center, click here.  Opportunity automation helps streamline your sales process by creating opportunities, moving them through stages, and triggering actions based on stage changes. With these automations, you can save time and maintain consistent follow-ups as leads progress toward closing. Automate Opportunity Creation Setting up an automation for opportunity creation allows you to capture leads and instantly turn them into opportunities. For instance, leads from sources like webchat or forms can automatically trigger opportunity creation. Using AI to qualify leads, you can analyze a webchat summary to identify the requested service, creating an opportunity if the lead meets the criteria. This workflow requires the Inbox Pro product. Here is a sample setup: Trigger: Lead is captured from webchat. AI Analysis: AI reviews the webchat summary to identify the service requested or returns "NA" if no service is specified. Opportunity Creation: If a service is identified, an opportunity is created and a follow-up task is generated. Follow-Up: An SMS is sent to inform the customer of next steps. To set up: Go to Automations.  Click Create automation. Find the template titled Create an opportunity and follow up when a lead is captured by Webchat. Customize the pipeline and steps to fit your process. Automate Actions Based on Opportunity Stages You can trigger nurturing campaigns and follow-ups as opportunities advance through stages. For example, you might want to start a targeted campaign for leads that aren’t ready to buy yet, keeping them engaged until they are. This automation requires the Campaigns Pro product with SMS credits. Here is a sample automation to trigger a nurturing sequence when the opportunity is moved to a nurturing stage: Trigger: When an opportunity reaches the nurturing stage. Action: Starts a tailored email and SMS campaign for the contact, maintaining engagement. To set up: Go to Automations. Click Create automation. Choose the Start a campaign when an opportunity moves to a specific stage template. In the setup, specify the desired pipeline and stage, and select the campaign to begin. Automatically Move Opportunities to Specific Stages You can set triggers to automatically move an opportunity to a particular stage based on activities, such as when an appointment is booked. This can be useful to reflect immediate updates in your sales pipeline, enhancing visibility. Here is a sample setup that moves an opportunity to an Appointment Set stage once a meeting is scheduled: Trigger: A meeting activity with "Scheduled" status is created or modified. Action: The automation updates the opportunity to the "Appointment Set" stage. To set up: Go to Automations. Click Create automation. Select the Move the opportunity to a specific stage when a meeting is booked template. Define the pipeline and stage, then review the steps to ensure it matches your process. These automated workflows allow you to focus on high-value tasks while keeping your sales pipeline updated and responsive. 

AI Assistant has revolutionized the way that customers can interact with a business online by responding to inquiries instantly, 24/7, providing great answers to questions and capturing leads. By learning from the content on a business's website, the AI assistant can automatically answer even more questions accurately with very little setup. Website knowledge training (website scraping) is available for both partners and their clients that use the AI-assisted Web Chat Lead Capture widget. Learn more about Inbox here. How to train a business's AI assistant on the website – For SMBs using Inbox in Business App: Requirements: Business App with Inbox tab enabled LocalSEO (free) active on the account, to test the AI Assistant before installing on a website. Inbox Pro is needed to install the chat widget on a business website and make it customer-facing.  Steps: Setup an account: From Partner Center, create or select the desired client account you wish to add website knowledge to. Make sure to activate Local SEO, so that a My Listing demo chat widget is created, and make sure that the account has a website with content on it you'd like to train. From the account details page, select Open Business App. Navigate to Inbox > Inbox Settings > Web Chat Widget and select 'Configure Web Chat' If you do not see Configure Web Chat, first click "Try it out today" to initialize a test Web Chat demo. Reload Inbox Settings page to see button to configure web chat. Go to 'AI Assistant' settings card, and select 'add knowledge' then choose "Website" Follow the wizard to train the AI assistant on a website. Make sure to select all the pages you'd like to train your AI on, and save. To install the Web chat widget on the business website, make sure Inbox Pro is active on the account, and then install using the installation instructions. FAQs Q: Why did my AI provide a certain answer? A: The AI will use facts and knowledge that it’s been trained on. If an answer was incorrect, it’s likely that the source training data was incorrect – the most common culprit is old or incorrect information found on the website. Q: How long does training take? A: Depending on the size of a website, and how many pages the AI is trained on, it may take 1-5 minutes for the AI to begin using the new knowledge in its answers. Be patient after training a large website when testing. Q: Can the AI be trained on all the pages on my website? A: By default, only the home page of the website will be scraped. The AI can then be trained on up to 100 pages from a website. Choose ‘follow links’ or ‘sitemap’ mode for finding pages on a website to give the AI as much content as possible to answer questions for your leads and customers. Q: Why am I having issues with AI scraping a certain site? A: This may be blocked in the WordPress settings for the site. To check, navigate to the WordPress dashboard > Settings > General > Privacy > Ensure that 'Prevent third-party sharing for' is unchecked. 

If your Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) listing is suspended, the owner of the business must appeal the suspension directly to Google. Vendasta is unable to appeal suspended profiles on your behalf. Google may suspend Business Profiles and user accounts that go against their guidelines. Check Google's guidelines. Fix a suspended profile Important: To avoid delays, submit one request per account. Review the Google Business Profile guidelines.  Sign in to Google Business Profile. Ensure your profile follows the guidelines. Learn how to edit your profile. After your profile meets the guidelines, you can ask for reinstatement. Use our form. Appeal a denied request If your request was incorrectly denied, contact Google. They can help verify your eligibility. When you get an email from them, reply with: Pictures of the front of the store Summary of business operations

What are Hours of Operation?  Businesses with hours of operation past midnight can easily update their hours in the Business Profile on the Vendasta platform. Under the 'Hours' tab, clients can enter business hours like 11:00 am - 3:00 am in Local SEO's Business Profile or in Business App, or you may update their hours in Partner Center under Account Management.  Please note: Changes to hours typically occur quickly, but in some cases, hours can take 3-5 days to sync to Google. Please plan updates to hours accordingly. 

The Business Category ensures that all sources and industry statistics are relevant to a particular account. You can enter more than one Business Category, but only the first will be used for setting visibility sources. All Vendasta customers have access to a category system based off of Google's 4000+ categories. As you can see in the screenshot above, you can select sub-categories to fine-tune the Business Category. Most categories go only two levels deep. The advantage of selecting more specific categories is that listing sources will be better tailored to these categories, resulting in a better experience for the client. Why is the business category important? Choosing the correct business category can significantly boost a local business' Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and search engine results page (SERP) ranking. This is especially true for Google Business Profile, as there are over 4000 categories to choose from that can either make it easier or harder for potential customers to find that business.  For example, a local Pizza Restaurant can set its primary category as "Pizza Restaurant" and may appear in search results for Restaurants, Italian Restaurants, or Pizza. It's important to choose a more specific category rather than a vague one whenever possible. Choosing a category like "Nail Salon" rather than just "Salon" is more likely to grab the attention of those looking for nail care rather than a haircut. If there is no suitable specific category, we advise you to choose a more general primary category.  How to change the business category Navigate to Partner Center > Accounts > Manage Accounts > Select the desired account > Edit > Under the Basics section, select the primary and additional categories.  For a full overview of the new Business Categories, you can reference the comprehensive spreadsheet attached.

Transferring contacts from Campaigns to Inbox Pro for individual email or SMS follow-up is possible through the automations feature in Business App. This guide will walk you through the steps to send follow-ups to individuals who have opened your campaign emails, allowing for more targeted engagement. Before you begin, ensure that you have Inbox Pro and that your email and SMS setup is complete in Business App. Step 1: Create an automation You will need to use the trigger When a contact is modified, and the field Last campaign email open date.  We recommend adding contact tags prior to this, and choosing them in the additional conditions in the trigger section. Step 2: Based on your specific need, a simple option is to choose the Send a plain text email via Inbox step.  OR - You can opt to create a more advanced workflow such as the following:  This example includes steps to send follow up via SMS or notifications if needed.  The automation run will be similar to the following automation:  

What are Google Business Profile Insights? Since adopting Google's latest APIs to power our Google Insights data, all Vendasta customers have access to new and valuable Google Business Profile Insights.  The following metrics have been added wherever applicable in the Vendasta platform: Search Terms - available in Local SEO and the Executive Report Search Total - available in Local SEO, the Executive Report, Multi-Location, and Multi-Location Executive Report Customer Interaction [Bookings] - available in Local SEO, Executive Report, Multi-Location, and Multi-Location Executive Report Customer Interaction [Conversations] - available in Local SEO, Executive Report, Multi-Location, and Multi-Location Executive Report Customer Interaction [Food orders] - available in Local SEO, Executive Report, Multi-Location, and Multi-Location Executive Report These new metrics are defined by Google as: Searches: The queries people use to find your client's business. The Searches metric is updated at the beginning of each month. Please note, updates may take 5 days to show up. Bookings: Number of completed bookings by customers.  Food orders: Food orders placed for pickup or delivery directly from your client's Google Business Profile with an Order with a Google Provider.  Conversations: Number of unique conversations through messages. What does the Google Insights tab look like?  

Are you a road warrior? Traveling for business can be a great experience, however, it can also be a chaos ridden, hair-pulling, stress inducing nightmare if you aren't organized and prepared. In this episode of the Master Sales Series, George walks you through his top 14 tips for conquering business travel. — 14 Tips for Conquering Business Travel Welcome back. It's another edition of the Master Sales Series. We're having a lot of fun with these. And just when I think I can't come up with other topics, we come up with more topics. So coming up, one of my favorite things to talk about, and it's been some hard-earned lessons, I'm gonna give you some of my number one travel rituals, how I get through being a road warrior, 220 flights a year, 190 bloody hotel stays a year, lots of miles. It's not all it's cracked up to be. We'll talk about those travel rituals when we come back on the "Conquer Local Podcast." Don't get me wrong, traveling for business can be a lot of fun. You get to meet new people, get to go to crazy places, you get to be on a plane, somebody comes by and brings you a nice Woodford on the rocks. But you got to learn some things to make this thing...because after a while it's like, "Do I really gonna have to go to Wichita, Kansas. It's not all gonna be Paris and Rome, folks, it's gonna be times you're gonna have to go to Modesto, California." So when you're spending a lot of time on the road, it can really get to be a bit of a grind. I remember I was on the road for five weeks. This is about four years ago, five weeks straight, and it was really tough emotionally. I wasn't even in a relationship at that time. It was just George conquering the world by himself, but it was tough. I missed my kids. I missed my mom and dad. I missed my friends. You know, the hotel room start to become the same. Hard to find the bathroom in the middle of the night sometimes, run into walls and stuff. And then it starts to wear on you. Now, there also are some things that can just give you the back sweats. You know, what the back sweats are, is when you're like in turmoil and you've got a lot of stress because you lost your phone, or you can't find your passport, or you slept in, or you can't find your gate, or you check your watch and you realize your plane took off 10 minutes ago. So here's some rituals that I've come up with. And, you know, I've got a lot of people that I'm gonna credit for this that have helped me with this. So one of my really good friends, Lorrie Morgan, her company and I travel quite a bit about five years ago, and she gave me some really good advice. 1. Pick an airline, and stick with it She said, "Okay, number one, pick an airline and stick with it." You can fly other airlines, but when you pick one airline, you're gonna start to get a thing called status. And with status comes some perks. One, you get to get on the plane first. Why is that important? Well, you get overhead bin space. And that is a big deal. Because if you're late getting on the plane and you go to slide into your seat 18F and it's already full, and you've got a carryon bag, now you got to move the carryon bag back in the plane. It's gonna take you forever to get off of the...so that's number one, picking an airline. Here's some other benefits to picking an airline. When you start to get to the platinum and to the diamond tiers, you're gonna start to earn upgrades and you're going to get lounge access. Oh, and you don't have to line up in the security line, you're gonna get priority clearance. So you definitely want to sign up for every airline that has a rewards and a loyalty program, you're gonna wanna sign up for that. I've signed up for them all. I have them all. Everyone, doesn't matter which one. I fly Delta. I like Delta. I've had really good experiences with Delta and I like the people there. They do a pretty good job. Now I'll run across somebody they're like, "Oh, I hate Delta." Anyways, it really comes down to your personal preference, but I really enjoy that brand and they've got a great program. I travel a lot. I was fortunate enough to get to Diamond this year. Don't have to stand in line, lounge access. You get upgrades like crazy unless you're flying between Minneapolis and Atlanta. That's a tough one to get an upgrade on. So that's your first piece. Pick an airline. Stick with it. Get your status in place you can get some loyalty. The other thing that is nice about it is when you start on those loyalty programs, you start to get the miles and then you can utilize those miles for personal trips. And that's one of the perks. Now some companies will say, "No, you got to use those miles for business trips," but a lot of companies will say, "No, it's part of having to live in bloody airports and sleep on those stupid couches sometimes because your flight is delayed. You can keep the miles and use it as a bit of a perk." So it's a nice thing. 2. Don't do different sh*t The second item, and I'm gonna give this credit to our CEO, Mr. Brendan King, don't do different shit. Meaning do the same thing every time. Put your passport in the same pocket of your briefcase. Put your laptop in the same spot every time. Don't leave it in the seat back pocket, put it in your bag. Make sure you double check your seat back pocket every time. Make sure that your cell phone is in a certain spot. So this was one of the key components, don't do different shit means that if you are ever woken in the morning and you slept in by 15 minutes, everything should just work like clockwork because you do the same thing over and over and over again. This has been a really important lesson that I appreciate. Thank you, Brendan. It saved me a ton of anxiety. In fact, the only time I get anxiety is when I do different shit. It's like clockwork that happens. 3. You need 2 pieces of ID So another thing that has happened and, you know, I come by a lot of these lessons from the school of hard knocks, you need two pieces of ID and they should never be in the same place at the same time. So here's what I mean by that. You got your driver's license, you're gonna need it if you're gonna rent a car and you get your passport, you're gonna need that if you do any sort of travel. I always take my passport and two credit cards and I put them into the hotel room safe. And if I'm going out at night, I take my credit card and my driver's license. The reason that I made the choice to put the passport in the safe is if you lose the passport, you are literally screwed. If you lose your driver's license, you just can't rent cars. So screwed. Can't rent cars. Pretty easy, right? And this happened to me. I was in Tyler, Texas and I fell asleep. I did different shit. I gave the flight attendant my jacket. I put my passport in the pocket of my jacket. She brought back my jacket, so I could put it on at the end of the flight. Took the passport out of the pocket and put it into the seat back pocket. I was half asleep, left my passport in the seat back pocket of the plane. But oh, it gets better. I went to Delta and they've got lost and found in the Dallas airport and I said, "Hey, I was on this flight in Tyler, Texas." They said, "Oh, no problem. I'll call Lost and Found." And they did have George's passport. So that was great. I continue to travel around Texas and do business and I go to fly home and I go to Lost and Found and they did not have George's passport. Well, not George Leith, they had Jorge Vicente's passport. So not George Leith's passport. So this isn't gonna help me. So I go to the counter thinking that, "Well, I'll just use my driver's license." And the lady at the counter says, "I can't give you a flight back to Canada without a passport. If you do not have a passport, you cannot even get back." So I said, "Well, what do I do?" So I had to fly to Seattle, rent a car, drive across the border, and at the border crossing, show that I was Canadian with my driver's license and explain that I'd lost my passport. The other thing that you can do, I found out after the fact is you can go to the authorities and report your passport stolen or lost, whatever it is, and they can give you some sort of a document that you can then give to the airline. So there's other ways around it, but literally, you need to have that passport. 4. You need to have at least 2 credit cards So here's the tip, you need a couple of credit cards anyways. So this is another piece. This is why the passport and one credit card go in the safe and your driver's license comes with you. Because if you only have one credit card and it gets frauded, meaning somebody takes the number and you happen to be in Fort Worth, Texas and some dude in Miami is trying to use it at a Whole Foods, the credit card company will shut the thing down and you can't turn it on. Like just, "No, we're shutting it down. It's being frauded." So you're again, screwed if you only have one credit card. You're going to Western Union and getting your dad to wire your money or something like that. Happened to me, by the way. So now you have two credit cards. They have to have high limits, and you put one with your passport in the safe and you have your driver's license and your other credit card and now you're good to go. Even if something bad happens, somebody holds you up, you could still get back to the hotel, they know who you are, let you in, you're good to go. 5. Take a pictures of your hotel room numbers Next, take pictures of your hotel room number. Now this is an interesting thing, when you start going to three different hotels a week, every week, they all start to look the same. And I remember one night having security tap me on the shoulder. I'd had a couple of drinks. It was in Cincinnati. Went to a great restaurant named Jack Ruby's. Okay, two or three bottles of wine, it's really what it was. Anyways, my hotel was the Hyatt, I was actually in the Marriott with my room key trying to get into 621. I knew the room number, I just had forgotten what hotel I was in. Anyways, room numbers great one. I did have a time on Sanibel Island too where I had just checked in and I went up to the room and I went down to the gym and I hadn't even been drinking on this time. So no excuse other than they just all start to run together. I had to go to the front desk and ask them what my room number was. So you just take a picture, have it on your phone and then you know...and way better than carrying that little thing that they put the room card in. So there's a reason why you don't have a room number on your key, is because if somebody steals it, they can get into your room or if somebody holds you up and takes you to the room. So that's one of the reasons. If you have it on your phone, at least it's locked on the phone. 6. Take pictures of your receipts Take pictures of your receipts immediately. So this is another thing. I used to just take all the receipts and put them into a pocket in my briefcase and you lose that crap. You forget where they were from. You forget who you had dinner with. Now you're lying on your expense reports. You know, just bad things are going on. It's pretty easy. You're right there having dinner, you got the two pieces of paper because you need the detailed receipt or the accounting department is not gonna take it because whatever, you know, tax jurisdiction you're in, you need to have detailed receipts. Take a bloody picture of it right there, get yourself Concur, FreshBooks, QuickBooks, whatever it is to record them and make that expense thing way easier. Now, do I get this right? No, it's still a challenge because I'm not really a detail-oriented person. I have a personal assistant that helps me with my expenses. But even for her she really likes it when I take a picture of it immediately and send it to her. So we just have a folder and Slack and it's just between her and I and I just take a picture and I upload it to Slack. Done. I have gotten way better at that piece. Here's the thing, it's gonna save you money. The estimate that I had by crinkling them all up and putting them into a pocket and then remembering to upload them some days, I'm losing 10%, probably 15%. And when you're running $10,000 to $15,000 worth of expenses a month, do the math, it's costing you money. So that's one of the reasons why companies get you to pay for it, by the way, is because they want you to be accountable for that information that's coming through. 7. Get a credit card specialized for travel Speaking of expenses, get yourself a credit card that is specialized for travel. I use RBC Avion and it's fantastic. You're double-dipping then. You're getting points from the airline. You're getting points from the hotel. You're getting points from the car rental company, and you're getting the points on the credit card. So now you've got two different places that you can travel. You can book your airline flights, you can buy a new TV, do whatever you want with the stuff that's on your credit card and then you do the same with the hotel points and you can do the same with the car rental points so you're, you know, using a points credit card that is specialized for travel. Now the other thing that I like about the...I have the RBC Avion Infinite Privilege. It cost me $499 a year. But guess what? I've had times where I call the concierge number and they can get me concert tickets or they can get me into a hockey game that you can't get into. They can get me into a restaurant that you phone the restaurant they're like, "No, we're sold out." You phone that number like, "No, no problem. We can get you in there." Another card that our CEO Brendan King really likes is the American Express Platinum card. It's fantastic for getting into lounges. The Avion card does have the priority pass lounge thing as well. So, you know, two high-end cards, they cost you a little bit of money every year, but the perks far outweigh the $499 a year you get charged. 8. Keep EVERYTHING in the cloud Now when you're gonna be on the road, you're gonna be working. Here's a real simple thing, don't store anything on the hard drive of your bloody computer, phone, iPad, whatever you have. Keep it all in the cloud. Because if your laptop bag gets stolen, you can always go to the Apple store and buy a new one, access the cloud and still make the killer presentation to the client. So here's where I learned this one. I'm in Orlando, Florida. It's early in my career as a road warrior. I'm at American Automobile Association, the AAA. I'm gonna make a big presentation to those folks. Got the rental car. I'm out in the parking lot, pulling on my jacket, and I closed door to the rental car. And I realized that I have locked my briefcase, my keys, my phone, everything in the car, and I have to make a presentation. So thank God it was at AAA because they were able to get my stuff out of the car. They didn't even charge me. But first I was able to make my presentation because all of my presentation materials were in the cloud. So whether it's a backup and you're gonna store some resident on your hard drive or your computer or you're gonna have a hard copy, I don't really care. It's just having the backup on the cloud. You know, USB sticks are so 2010. Let's get that stuff on the cloud because then you can access it from anywhere. Imagine if you had a MacBook and you needed to use a dongle and you didn't have a VGA dongle. If you had a PC and maybe it was connect...so, you know, sometimes you go to these presentation rooms, they'll have their own resident computer connected to the projector. And if you're on the cloud, again, you can just access the cloud and still make the presentation. 9. Pack key equipment Oh, that brings me to dongles. Dongles for days, I call it. I have a little bag full of dongles. Every single freaking dongle that Apple has ever created for every computer and they follow me around everywhere. I also have my own clicker to do presentations, I just find that bring in your own stuff ensures that you're going to have a great presentation. I even went as far as buying one of those mini projectors because I was paranoid at the bulb of the projectors would go out. That didn't work out too well because the thing I bought was piece of crap. But as many things as you can have to make sure that the reason you're on the road is to do sales stuff, which is make great presentations, show off your products and services, and you got to make sure that you are bringing the right things for every occasion. 10. Always have some foreign currency Always have a little bit of currency for the country that you're traveling to. It's pretty easy to do this now. You don't have to go to the bank a week before, and I remember when I was doing some traveling early in my career you gotta get traveler's checks. I got some people right now listening to the podcast going, "What the hell is that?" Y'know, American Express traveler's checks. Don't leave home without them. It was a thing. You went and got these traveler's checks and then if you got held up or they were stolen or lost, you could just shut them off. It was pretty unique. Here's the reason why I like currency. When you get to some of these countries, they may not take credit card. And I find this a lot with cab companies. I'm not picking on cab companies, but I am. I was in South Africa and got into, you know, to the cab company that has the contract with the Johannesburg Airport. So you're thinking it's pretty legit, right? And jump into the cab, get the ride all the way to the place that I was going, and then they say, "No, we don't take credit cards." And I'm like, "Well, all I have is credit card and American cash." "Nope, don't take American cash." They wanted South African Rand. So you go to the hotel desk hoping they have an ATM. No ATM. Now you got to get the cab driver to drive you to some bank, put your credit card in to get the cashout or a debit card. Anyways, it just will save you a bit of grief as soon as you get off the plane you find one of those currency counters. Grab yourself, you know, whatever is equivalent of 100 bucks. It's nice to have some tipping money too. I did find this to be very unique to South Africa. I have, you know, yet to run across this and other jurisdictions. They have security guards in all of their parking lots so when you rent a car, there's a security guard there and they would like to see a couple of coins to make sure that your tires don't get slashed. I don't know if that's a unique to South Africa thing. I've yet to experience it anywhere else. You know, and it is nice to have a little bit of cash just to tip as you're running around. It might help you get some better service. 11. Pack smarter So next up, really simple one, but it does take some discipline, always pack your luggage the night before an early flight. Now I've taken this a step further. If I'm flying out the next day, I pack my luggage the night before. And if I'm going out for a client dinner, I pack my luggage before I even leave for the next day. Just set aside 15...the other thing is, if it's taken you more than 15 minutes to pack, you're packing a bunch of crap you don't need. So you've got to become a little bit of a minimalist when it comes to packing. You don't need eight suits. You don't need eight dresses. You don't need eight pairs of shoes. You need to come up with a wardrobe that's gonna be functional. It's gonna serve for a casual night. It's gonna serve for professional nights. You know, you don't need 20 shirts. I'm about to embark on six weeks on the road nonstop. I'm taking five shirts. I'm gonna dry clean the shit out of them. If it doesn't work out, I'll just go buy three more. The thing about it is you're gonna be on the road, it's pretty easy to go get stuff. There's a Murphy & Johnston in pretty much every airport or a Brooks Brothers. You don't need to be packing the 59-pound bag that you then have to take crap out of it. Oh, weight the bag. Like nothing irritates other travelers more than you rookie travelers that put 59 pounds worth of stuff in a bag. You can only get 50 pounds, it's a known fact. And they're gonna charge you a lot if you got more than that. The other thing that I've started doing, if I am gonna be traveling and I am going to be doing some shopping, I have a really nice leather coach bag that I pack inside the suitcase. It weighs about a pound and a half, pound and three quarters so it's about the size of a pair of jeans. And so I got one last pair of jeans but I have a bag in case we buy some stuff, we can just put it in a carryon bag and now I'm good to go and I don't have to buy another bag. 12. Invest in luggage All right, so next up, let's talk about...oh, I should talk about luggage because there are a number of different luggage brands out there. I just got back from a great trip to Asia. Wow, Rimowa, they own Asia. Everybody's got a Rimowa. Super expensive aluminum luggage. It's pretty cool. Tumi has come out with a really nice luggage bag. But the luggage bag that I'm liking today is Away. And Away is a startup that came up here recently. I bought an aluminum Away bag here just a couple months ago. It's about a third of the price of a Tumi. It's about a fifth of the price of a Rimowa. It's got a nice little USB charger inside it so it's a carry-on. You can't have the lithium battery in it if you put it underneath. And I liked it so much, I bought the large series. So when you are on the road for a longer period of time, you're gonna do the 50-pound bag, I got one of those. So Away, I told all my friends about it. A bunch of them have bought them and they love it. So it's as good as a name brand and it's a new startup that has just be a fantastic brand. 13. Check into hotel shuttles Okay, next up, your hotel might have a shuttle and that shuttle comes to the hotel. A lot of brands have, I'm a Hilton guy. Hilton has got them. Most Hampton Inns, most Hilton Garden Inns come straight to the airport, gives you ride. It doesn't cost you a penny. Maybe you should tip the guy that lifts your bags. They run pretty much on the half hours. So, you know, that's one way to get to the hotel. You know, you might have to wait a little bit but not bad. Uber is great. Lyft is great. The one thing about them though is that they put them in the weirdest places. So in Atlanta, they put the Uber and Lyft station pretty much in Miami. So you've got a walk quite a ways to get to the Uber and Lyft station. I did it right after my hip surgery last year. It was not a pleasant scene. Anyways, the reason for that is the cab companies are all in a deal with the airport. Pay them some sort of a fee to have their station right out front. But we all know about cabs, I'm not picking on them, but it's just not a good user experience. When you look ahead, you find this hotel shuttle. Uber, Lyft, fantastic as well. 14. Become a master of your apps I got one other item that I wanted to touch on and become a master of your apps, I call it. I have a folder on my phone. It's called Travel. It's got all my top travel apps that I use from checking on flight status to checking the weather at the location you're going to be at. I also have on there a great little app for renting cars called Silvercar. It's one of my favorite car rental companies. For about the price of any other car that you're gonna rent, you always get an Audi A4. And now they have the Q5. But better than that, they pick you up and they drop you off at the airport. So no more horrible rental car shuttles and parking 20 miles away and all, even drive right up to the gate and they just come get you. So it's pretty cool. It's called Silvercar by Audi now. In fact, it was a startup and Audi got involved with them and I think they ended up buying them out or something like that recently. Anyways, just a few things that will make your life a little bit better. I had someone request that I would do an addition on travel rituals. I hope that these things help you when you are on the road to become better. We welcome any suggestions that you may have that I can pass on. I'm sure there's some road warriors out there. Brad Petersen, my good buddy from MatchCraft, Kimberli Lewis from SIINDA, Paul Plant, that I have a privilege of working with. Maybe you guys have some things that you'd like to share. Get them in here to me on LinkedIn, and I would love to share them with the rest of our listeners. May the rose ride up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rains fall soft upon your fields until we meet again, and may God hold you in the palm of his hand. I'll see you when I see you. I'm George Leith.

If your client has sent SMS review requests through Customer Voice Pro prior to sending their first Inbox message, the phone number will be the same. However, if your client uses the Business app Inbox before activating or sending any SMS review requests through Customer Voice Pro, the numbers will be different.

Introducing Primary Category for Businesses! New Primary Category field: An enhancement for businesses aiming to refine their online presence. Now, businesses can designate their core specialization, aligning with industry standards observed by Google and Apple. As a part of this change, we will also expand our limit of 3 categories to 10 to match other sources. The Primary and expanded Additional categories will sync out to our Listing Sync Pro and our Listing Distribution partners. How Do Primary Business Categories Work? Automatic Set-Up: For most businesses, we streamline the process by automatically setting the primary category based on data sourced from Google. This ensures accuracy and saves valuable time. Partner Collaboration: In cases where automatic setup isn't feasible, or if there's a discrepancy between our system and Google's primary category, we leverage the expertise of you, our Partners. Through the Local SEO admin dashboard, Partners can view the categories set on a business, and see what is set on their Google listing. From there you can select the most suitable primary category for the business.  API Partners: The first category sent for a location will be used as the Primary Category. This feature not only enhances business visibility but also optimizes their online presence for maximum impact. How to Use Primary Business Categories Navigate to Partner Center > Products > Local SEO. Click Admin View Dashboard. Go to the Category Management tab. Select the appropriate Primary categories if applicable.

What is the Business Profile?  All Local SEO users have access to a Business Profile tab in the product. This tab gives you and your clients the ability to edit business profile data within the Local SEO product. We've also added exciting new fields and attributes such as Special Hours (Holiday hours) and category-specific Google attributes. We also have "More Hours" available now which allows you to set things like delivery hours, drive-thru hours, etc. How will syncing of the Business Profile work?  Any account with Local SEO, a Listing Sync Pro add-on, or Listing Distribution can sync out Special Hours and category-specific Google attributes. These new fields can be found under the "Hours" and "More" tabs respectively. Special Hours is great for setting things like holiday opening hours and letting customers know about special exceptions to your regular opening hours. Google attributes allow businesses to share details about their business with potential customers. Adding these attributes can allow a business to show up in search results when people search for places with those attributes on Google Search and Google Maps. Since Google attributes are category-specific, your clients will see different sets of attributes.   

Yes, the Billing Settings functionality within Business App allows users within an account the ability to 'replace' a credit card provided another one has been added. 

When selecting a logo in the Business Profile, it is important to select an image file that has square dimensions. If the logo is not a square, it will be reformatted to become a square. This can cause it to become distorted or zoomed in. Our system is designed to take square images due to the image requirements of social and listing sites for logo photos. To update the logo for an account Navigate to Partner Center > Accounts > Manage Accounts > Select Account > Edit > Images > Add Photos. Upload and save the desired photo, and then click the 3 dots to set the photo as a logo.   

If the Advanced Login feature is enabled, logging into the WordPress dashboard from Partner Center or Business App could be affected if a reCaptcha is set up on the WordPress login page. When the toggle is turned off, a user can log in using www.domainname.com/wp-admin. If you would still like to log in from Partner Center or Business App, simply disable the captcha feature on the login page (If using a reCaptcha plugin, simply disabling the plugin should achieve this).

Submitting the proper Taxonomy ID will help ensure that the sources add the business’ listing to the proper category within their site. This ultimately allows users to easily find their business listings. Avoid selecting ‘other’ as a business category as some sources do not support this category type and this may result in the business not being found on unsupported listing sources.  The listing recognize certain business categories and a mismatch in business categories will result in syncing incompatibility with the listing sources. It is also important for competitor analysis in the Snapshot report. If competitors selected for comparison have different business categories, it will not provide the analysis.