Uberol

Lance Hood (FranPro) 0:09

Hi everyone . Today we have Kelly Benish , the VP of Strategic Partnerships for Uberall . Kelly welcome .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 0:16

Hi Lance , hi everyone , thanks so much for having me today .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 0:20

Well , Uberall is a pretty cool platform . Can you tell us a little bit about it ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 0:25

Yeah sure , uberol is actually a Berlin based company .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 0:30

It is a series of acquisitions over the last 10 years and the solution set is anything from listings management , reputation management , social media management and also locator pages for multi locations as well as small to medium sized businesses . It's really one source of truth where the franchisee can leverage the platform to manage all of those aspects , like making sure , if you're Starbucks , for instance , having someone do a search on their phone for coffee near me , making sure that that location pops up and there's accessible touch points . Besides that , too , there's an analytics piece showing clicks , calls , driving , directions being generated to the location and then reviews being pulled all into one place for the franchisee or franchiseur to actually go in and respond to those reviews , even from places that they don't even know exist . And then also setting up social media calendars from pre-approved social posts , templatizing things , basically putting efficiencies in places for the brand that they didn't know existed and making their lives easier . So when they're doing inventory , managing the location , hiring , doing taxes , they can focus on those things rather than setting up and managing their marketing .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 2:07

Absolutely . I think from my experience companies don't take as enough , they don't put enough into monitoring these reviews and I think putting them all in one place it just makes it so simple . But you definitely want a mechanism to capture the reviews in the first place , because people have all these opportunities and they don't take advantage of capturing them and then respond to them , and you guys help them with that right .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 2:34

Exactly , and so many people also think , okay , I'm not going to actually put my business on a review site , I don't want the reviews , it's too much trouble , but there's so many reviews out there that businesses don't even know exist and sometimes they're negative .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 2:51

So what we found ? Actually there's something called the local search ranking factors . It's put out by Darren Shaw and there's about 132 different signals behind local search and social , local social all the things that these businesses need to consider and the platform really takes all of that into account and makes it easy for them very intuitive to navigate through that . When we look at reviews , just 0.1 percentage higher of a rating a star rating can lead to an increase in 25% of conversions , so that's pretty impressive , and about three out of 10 reviews that are responded to help to increase the Google page alone the visibility of that Google page by about 71% . So even responding to negative reviews and showing that you , as the business owner , are there and let's sort this out offline here's my number or my email it's just so important to show the audience that's looking at those reviews that you care , and many times if you do a good job of that , they'll go back in and change that negative review , that one to three star review , will now become a four or five star review .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 4:13

I agree , and I would assume that most of your organic reviews are the people are going to be motivated because they're a little frustrated . So you're going to see that if you just leave it as organic . But if you are asking , if you're proactively asking for reviews , that's where you get more of your higher reviews , because those are the happy people but you kind of have to like remind them to do that . Is that kind of how it works ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 4:39

Exactly , and I'm guilty of it myself . I love supporting local businesses , local brands . I go out and when I have a wonderful experience , sometimes I'll pause and I'll be like , wow , what a great time I had today . Or that meal is delicious , I'll get to it at some point . And so we're finding that first and third party review solicitation and email that's generated or getting opted into a newsletter or mailing list are the easiest ways to sort of make sure that they're reminded of the opportunity to review that business . And there's a way to do it that doesn't violate Google and Yelp's terms and it's not necessarily asking for review , it's just making sure that they had a good experience coming off as completely genuine in the intent there .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 5:36

And I don't want people to think this is just a review platform . I mean , it's really . There's so much there that grabs people's attention and drives them right to local locations , you know . So it makes it easy to do business . We better , before we move on , touch on all the other things so that we don't get pigeonholed .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 5:55

Oh yeah , absolutely . I could talk about review management all day long , but when it comes to listings management , there's something that people are just not thinking about right now , and it's voice search . So when you look at traditional search results , you have 10 search spots on your your laptop right and Google , and you conduct your search on Google , it spits back 10 results . On your mobile phone , you have three search results .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 6:20

When we talk about voice search , there's over 33 million voice enabled devices in North America alone , and the ecosystem is different . So you have Siri through Apple , you have Microsoft Cortana through Bing , you have Samsung's Bixby solution through here and four square , and then you have Alexa . And when we talk about these voice search systems , they're really catered to the person who's searching algorithm . They are tailored to their voice , their intent . They look at proximity to location of search , they look at demand , they look at all these different factors and , with position zero , voice search spits back one result based on all of the different attributes behind the listings management the location that caters to that . But then there's about 37 other directories out there besides Google , besides Siri , besides the organic voice search ecosystem , that heavily influence that ecosystem , and I think it's one of the most under leveraged opportunities for a brand to beat out a small business , for instance .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 7:36

Well , thinking about only having one . There's only one leader , you know , so it's like you either get it or you don't , and that's I take that serious . And who isn't talking to their phone and telling it what to do nowadays ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 7:50

Absolutely , absolutely .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 7:53

Well , what do you think makes UBRAW different from other platforms that are providing services like this ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 8:01

Absolutely . There's a couple of things , and so one it's types of relationships that we have with our technology partners . We do everything above board . So with the publishers that we push the data out to in the review management platforms , we have solid agreements in place . It's also the thought leadership . So we actually have four Google business product experts on our team .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 8:27

So we have two gold , one silver and one platinum product expert on our team and we go out of our way to really share that knowledge , so sort of educating the masses , making sure that these brands have their vision aligned with their online marketing , but also giving them the best possible ways to do it so that they don't face things like penalties or you know risky issues behind review management .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 8:58

We make sure that they know the best possible way to do this based on their category for moment one , and then we automate redundant task work for them and things like our verification process , so validating information at the location level . We actually have a manual process where we verify that . That's anything from correcting rooftop pin so if it's a gas station , a fuel retail or four court fueling area , like a BP or a shell , we actually look at that rooftop pin and make sure it's accessible , but also that the driving directions are correct for that place , because I don't know about you , lance , but for driving , driving through the province , or I'm driving through my state and I have , you know , 17 kilometers or 20 miles left to go on my tank and I missed the turn for a gas station . I'm not pulling back around , I'm going to hit the next one on the highway .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 9:58

So that that verification process is really the difference between accurate data that we then push to our different technology partners , and it makes the overall customer experience that much better .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 10:14

And do you have any memorable stories from people who they were having a difficult time and then they , they went on the head and started working with Uberol and they were like wow , things have really changed .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 10:26

Yeah , actually we had a smaller brand . They have about 450 locations . They had them on a competitors platform and they moved over to our platform and in just two months they actually saw a two time increase in conversion rate and 144% increase in clicks .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 10:52

Oh , wow , and that's pretty impressive . So I have one more question . I want to show people a demo of what it looks like . But I have another question For people who aren't really familiar with the customer journey . Can you talk about that briefly , because this is really a lot of it ? It's a journey from where they are to your store and then ongoing .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 11:13

Exactly , and so it's really the ability to access new audiences that they might not have thought about . So I think COVID was very pivotal . Not to bring up COVID because no one wants to talk about that anymore , but there was this huge shift where it was all about a customer journey of convenience , where I know myself I dye my hair believe it or not , I have gray hair under here not completely gray , but enough to bother me and my hairdresser is one of my good friends Now legally . In the state of North Carolina , where I lived at the time , hairdressers could not practice their skill legally , and so how do my grays go away and how does he continue to make money ? So he pivoted his whole ideology and moved to an Ecom model where he mixed hair dye for me , melded it to me and then did a video chat with me and showed me how to apply it . I think that's so cool .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 12:15

There's so many different use cases that came out during COVID , but the one thing that stayed was we have to work smarter . We have to figure out different ways to capture new audiences and to appeal to them , and so mapping the customer journey based on , I think , behavioral searchability how they're searching , who's searching where , what they're searching for and what is the intent behind it has really sharpened , being able to show the path to purchase all the way through , taking it from doing online research . About eight out of 10 searches online and in an in-store visit , so it's a conversion philosophy behind it . They look at the menu before they go to the restaurant . A lot of research is done and I think we're a very traumatized society . Since COVID , when restaurants were closed , everyone checks . Now .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 13:15

That makes total sense . So , kelly , let's just switch over and I'm going to give you my screen and we can do a demo of Uber All here .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 13:24

Thanks so much , lance Perfect .

Overview of Franchise Locations Management Platform

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 13:30

So this is a very generic fake demo account where it's just very high level For the brand . You would have this bird's eye view where all of the locations would be grouped together and it would be just this high level overview of the platform . So if you have one to 10 locations , if you have more than one location , it would be this consolidation of information . So just going to show you very high level .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 13:58

You have a digest over here on the right hand side . Any activity on your locations will be reported there and it's all clickable . You can click in and respond to reviews , see who viewed you . All of those details . We also have something called a profile completeness score . It's a bit of gamification behind the listings management solution . So the more information that we're given about any one location , the better off . The search ability and review capabilities are behind our platform . So we have the required basic , advanced and bonus level criteria for a location and this just shows you where your locations might be a little bit sufficient . You can click in in real time and you can edit those locations . You can add the information that is needed . Listings in sync . This is just pushing information out there , making sure the information that you pushed us about the location is pushed out there to our network of over 125 global publishers it's anything from Apple to Google to Facebook and that information is then pulled back in and reflected here .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 15:12

Duplicates we do do manual duplicate cleanup . That means that we clean up the duplicates for you . We suppress them . This is basically if I have a location on Brown Book or Google and someone else , like a competitor , is trying to create another location , I'll shut that other location down . So Google isn't confused and it's not confusing to your customers . We also have this segmentation where you can group by seven days , 30 days , the last year , overall or custom . You can segment down the data . Let's just say one of your locations got one star reviews , 10 , one star reviews over the course of 10 days . You can group that out and you can see exactly what the problem is . You can also create custom hashtags , filters , and I could say I just want to look at my Southeast locations and I could click search and it would just be your Southeast locations , for instance . Any questions so far ? Lance ?

Lance Hood (FranPro) 16:19

So I'm a franchise order . Let's just say I have 100 locations , so I can see all 100 locations as a group , and then I can see the individual locations too , correct ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 16:33

That's exactly right , and so you've got a little bit of sentiment analysis here . Why don't I break it down actually into the individual location level ? So , for instance , if I go here , this is the individual location level , so I can see all of my data through here . Here's that dashboard view , but for this individual location .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 17:01

And each individual location is going to have their own sub-login correct For their stuff .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 17:07

That's exactly right . Yep , if I own three locations , my one login will give me access to all of these . Yeah , this particular account doesn't have Facebook syncs , so you're just going to see a little bit less on the analytics side , which is fine , but if we go here , for instance , you've got all of your data , we've identified it . We're in 170 countries in 33 different languages . We also work a lot with service area businesses where they serve locations outside of their address . They don't want their address to show on the map , and that's the big difference between our competitors . This is an area that we excel in . So , yeah , just putting specialties , opening hours , all of this deep data . If you have upcoming holidays that are about to occur , like 4th of July or Victoria Day , you can add all of that here .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 18:10

Languages , brands carried this is a big one too . I know for a lot of franchise co-op . We work with a brand called Schwartzkopf and it's hair salon products , shampoos , conditioners , hair sprays , all of that . We actually can put the Schwartzkopf brand and associate it to a location as well , on the retail side . So you'll see , here too , there's a lot of customization behind attributes . If they are a restaurant , for instance , you can also put menu links , reservation links in here and based on that , the user interface pivots to cater to restaurants .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 18:54

For instance , here is where we would upload images at work steer food and drink . This is a restaurant menu , additional photos , what their team is , videos , very , very comprehensive data . And then the real winning part of the solution here is profile suggestions . So when I went to log into this particular location , it was about 90% accurate , meaning it was missing some fundamental things , and so photos are missing here . This is taken from Bing and another site , the photos that they pushed out about their location . You can simply click here and add those profile suggestions , click confirm and now that location has a complete profile . They don't have to do anything else . So it really makes things easier on the franchisee .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 19:55

Right and I know we personally do that If we're going to pick out a new restaurant we'll go ahead and look at . We want to see inside the building and we also want to see the food . That stuff's super important .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 20:10

That's exactly right , yeah , and so we have this simple little OAuth process where the actual franchisee can link their existing Google or Facebook pages to the platform so that we can pull in those analytics . If it's a big brand , like over 50 locations , we can typically whitelist it and get all of their locations added to the platform easily , and this just shows the directory network across the board . There's also live listings here where if I click on this , it'll actually pull up the live location , what it looks like , where it's at . So it's a tool of convenience really to show them their overall visibility . And then they have other things like networks , the extended platform network where the information is pushed out to , and it covers everything from , like mapping to navigation and so a fun story just real quick about overall .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 21:15

They actually acquired the company that I came from , which is NavAds , and NavAds is a Dutch company . The Dutch are known for mapping and navigation and they powered a lot of the autonomous vehicle data , and so that could be a life or death situation if that data is wrong . So we're all about data accuracy and because of that we do work with a lot of the map makers , like here and TamTang , that push their information to vehicles . A lot of times , too , we'll work with new home builders because the street might not even be on the map , but as long as we get the street certificate , we can actually put that street on the map through the maps map makers that we work with .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 22:04

So for new construction .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 22:06

Exactly so . It's a super , super interesting ecosystem , new construction . We also work with EV charging stations , which are multi locations ATMs , a lot of fuel retail and anything from like kiosks to like Bitcoin ATMs . Anything that you can put on a map , we can do .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 22:30

Right , and so if you a lot of this stuff is really good retail , what about places like like home services brands is they utilize a lot of this stuff too ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 22:40

then yes , they do , and so the distribution changes with home services because in the entire ecosystem globally there is about 20 publishers or 20 sites that agree to hide the address on the map , and so that's pertinent when we talk about home services . So with home services to , they can only serve about 50 kilometers to 80 miles radius from their home location or they can get dinged and they can have a bad reputation overall for that service area of business . So it's not likely that we'll serve an entire province or an entire state , and that's typically when they run into trouble with that . But that being said , those 20 publishers hide the address , they drop a pin in the general vicinity and then they map from that location , making sure that that location is pulled into one place and they can manage those 20 profiles .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 23:52

Very good .

Data Analytics and Social Media Overview

Lance Hood (FranPro) 23:53

And when we were on the dashboard I saw like some graphs and charts and stuff . I always love that stuff . What was that ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 23:59

Yeah , so that is actually clicks , calls , driving directions being generated to that location . It's quantifiable data that can show you trends over time . I'm actually going to go back to the main screen here . So when we talk about certain verticals , driving directions , for instance , they would show up more for fuel retail , something that's very demand driven , right , I'm going to just search a gas station right now and then I'm going to map it immediately . I want to go there and fuel up my car . I want to go to Starbucks immediately or Tim Hortons immediately because I need coffee . I need to fuel myself up right now . Right , bail bonds , and that's another one where they just go .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 24:50

And so when we talk about the path to purchase , many times if it's something that is retail specific , where they're going to the website , right , the customer journey is going to the website , researching , looking at reviews out there and then going in store to make the purchase . You'll see that more on the big box retailers . And then phone calls many times for these restaurants , the phone calls are just being generated drastically because they want to know if their hours of operation are correct and that they're open or they're booking to make reservations with them . This is basically impressions to customer generated photos , photos from the merchants and then queries . So any sort of branded versus unbranded , direct , indirect query . So searching for a business name specifically , or a category or product or service , or even if they search for , like a parent of a chain , that can come up here and we encapsulate all of that .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 26:04

And then we've also got a reviews here . So for certain review publishers you can respond directly through the user interface . Tripadvisor and Yelp are one of those where you can't . You can filter out the reviews where I could say hide everything TripAdvisor and I want to see guide local . This is just a rating , it's just a star rating . You could also say I want to see all countries for this location . I want to see all directories except for TripAdvisor . There we go .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 26:46

And what's really cool is , if it's my first day as a brand manager , for instance , I can go here and I can say let me address the reviews that need to be addressed right away . I want to see one to three star reviews immediately . So this also as a franchise owner when you're not there , you can see what's happening behind your back . Do you have a terrible manager that is not treating customers properly or not treating staff properly . And then , on top of that , do you have staff that doesn't wear a mask and that don't care about health and safety . The cool part here is I can respond directly through the interface and say right away oops , my bad , sorry about that , don't worry , we fixed it . Here's an emoticon and I can submit it immediately just through this portal . Nice .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 27:46

So it just brings it all together for you .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 27:48

Exactly .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 27:51

Nice and then and yeah , you're right , it does give you an idea , when you go to the low star reviews , what's going on and what could be addressed . And , like you said , if somebody has like , it could either be at a store level or it could be like at a who's kind of helping to oversee that region , and so you can look the regions that you have management assigned to and see how everything's doing for those specific regional managers Exactly .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 28:20

That's exactly right . But yeah , you've also got social posts where you can schedule them to go out . You can select . I want to go to , you know , 18 directories globally . I want it to go to my locator page . I want it to go here and there . I want to post something on Google . You can add specific locations , which is cool .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 28:42

This is your social calendar too , your outbound .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 28:46

That's exactly right , and you can schedule your entire social calendar ahead of time . In here . You can create new posts at the drop of a hat . You can also , as a specific brand for your franchisees , go in here and create a custom template that they have to use . That's approved already and then , when you go through , you select your locations , you schedule it out at a specific time . If it's an offer , you can put terms and conditions behind it . You can put specific calls to action , but here's the part that I really love . So if it is an offer , you can put a specific duration or range and you can schedule it to go out at a specific time . So it's just a big time saver , especially for things that you know definitively are going to happen , like holidays . Right ? Just wanted to wish everyone a happy Diwali . I wanted to wish everyone a happy Hanukkah , merry Christmas , and it allows you to have dependent content that you know you can depend on year over year .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 29:54

Right , and so is it possible for them to . Instead of having a template library to access , are they able to maybe set up sequences for their new franchisees ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 30:06

That is actually in our product roadmap right now , so like triggers to that actually .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 30:13

That's very cool .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 30:14

Yeah , yeah , we've got a lot in our product roadmap and that's why we interface so closely with our franchisees and our brand clients too , because the feedback that they provide us we actually take to our product roadmap and make their lives easier by putting a business case around it and moving that forward .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 30:39

Well , excellent , anything else , otherwise I'll jump back and I have some more questions for you .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 30:44

Perfect , let's go back to you .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 30:47

All right . So the thing is is say I'm interested in Uber , all I mean . It's a cool tool . It takes everything you really want to know from inbound and outbound , puts it together in one place and then you know the franchise source can organize their franchisees and supply tools to them and see how they're doing . You know this is a really quick way to sort through and just see the real effects on the ground . What is the process of some of you helping people so say you know they , they , we have a link available for everybody . They can click on that and they go over to your website . What is the process from day one to their implemented ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 31:25

So we have an entire team over here actually that will work hand in hand with the brand . We typically start at 25 locations and , based on geographic region , what the needs are , what the specialization is based on , vertical , we pair that brand up or that franchisee up with a specific consultant over here , basically our account executives . We also have a pre-sales team which consists of those Google experts that I mentioned and it's a it's a full teaching process really , with the onboarding training . We also have a talent IMS system basically built in which is automated on-demand training for those brands to help them understand how to leverage the platform . We do specific walkthroughs with them at onboarding and a lot of them have locations that are coming over .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 32:22

So , listings , reputation , social this is nothing new to franchisees and brands , right ? So when they talk to us , it's hey , I have my location over here and what we always say is let's put a migration plan together for you . So there's no interruption of service . We have that other provider release those locations . We have them download them from whatever interface they're using and our team creates a migration plan for them . We'll sync their Google accounts and their Facebook accounts . We have them sync them and we give them a walkthrough of their user interface , how to use it , how to set up those automations after the sales process , and then they have a dedicated customer service team that supports them and also provides white glove services if that's what they need . So doing things for the brand , such as like taking images for Google through our partner , aircam , or basically showing them how to optimize for their locations for Google and for other publishers for voice search . Even so , instilling those best practices in the brands , and they do not leave us without having that education and very customized product plans for them .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 33:44

Right . Well , how long does that normally take from you know ? I know it can vary , but from first conversation to implemented , what's the normal timeline ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 33:55

I've seen it as quick as a couple of days . I've also seen us onboard 44,000 locations for one brand globally , and that took a little bit longer , about a month . And so it just depends on our customers , right , what their needs are , how much they need . But our team will typically band together to make sure that the migration is possible , is mapped out carefully so that they have no interruptions of service and that they get , you know , a best and a great solution with the quickest amount of time but also the most ease on their end . So it just depends on how many resources they have internally . We do typically require someone from their team to help product manage this or , you know , manage the migration from their end . So typically , on average , it's about two weeks total from , you know , first conversation to onboarding .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 34:57

Right , and is there anything that they can do personally to shortcut the process ?

Good Data, Customer Relationships

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 35:02

Yeah , I think the biggest thing is having good data to begin with . You know , knowing your locations , knowing what your customers are thinking , asking them the questions when they're in store how'd you find us ? You know what drew you to us over a competitor . And also , I think , being open minded that a lot of times you're not competing with other brands . You're competing with mom and pop as a brand . So being willing to think outside the box and really map your customer journey and build that relationship with your customers that are coming into your brick and mortar business or , if you're a service area business , really knowing the business inside out , what you're known for , what your key differentiators are , so that we can make that public knowledge .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 35:46

Right on . Well , thank you , kelly . I was just going to tell everybody again . We have the link here . You can go right there , check out https://Franpro . vip/GoUberall and reach out to their team . Thanks , kelly .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 36:01

Have a great one .