Introduction

Welcome to the Fall 2023 Release Notes! The team here at Uberall have been busy working on new features and enhancements to the Uberall platform that we are excited to share with you and your clients. In this release, you’ll find a refreshing redesign of our Listings UI, continued improvements to our organic Social features, all-new advanced AI integrations to improve your customers' engagements, and so much more! We encourage you to check them all out below!

Before we get started, we understand that you may have questions, which is why we encourage all of our Partners to reach out and request a consultation if you find that anything isn’t clear or you’d just like to schedule a chat and explore how to improve your customers' experience using our solution.

Product Spotlight

AI Related Feature Enhancements

AI-Powered Assistance for Personalized and Efficient Customer Engagement

The Message Assistant taps into a wide range of knowledge bases to deliver rich, accurate, and engaging responses across a range of messaging platforms from Google and Facebook to Instagram and web chat.

Let’s take a look at what’s new…

Message Assistant (Knowledge Base)

With the rapid development of AI, our team has been making strides in innovation to increase the capability of the Message Assist. In this release we add the functionality for businesses to upload .TXT files into Uberall to expand the knowledge of their Message Assistant. This Large Language Model enables your Messages Assistant to utilize information from help articles, frequently asked questions, and more; working in tandem with your customers' location data to, in turn, better serve their customers!   

Message Assistant (Localization)

In addition to the Knowledge Base, we have expanded the number of languages supported by the Message Assistant. This will enable the Message Assistant to distinguish and respond to customer messages in over 100 languages! 

This is a no setup required solution as our model automatically translates the Message Assistant’s Knowledge Base to seamlessly converse with a customer. Additionally, a customer can request that the Message Assistant converse in a supported language should the customer’s language not be immediately detected.

Instagram Direct Messages

Instagram is now added to the list of channels supported within Messages; alongside Facebook Messenger, Google Messages, and Web Chat. Simply create a new Messages setup for a brand and/or local Instagram accounts (connection to Instagram required). Once configured, users will see new conversations from Instagram DMs funnel into the Messages Inbox. 

Let’s dive into the two huge new AI features that will redefine how you engage with your customer reviews…

Review Assistant (AI Generated Auto-Responses)

The team has expanded on the Review Assistant’s Auto-Responses features by introducing new AI capabilities in the setup process. Users can now use AI to generate responses that will be used to reply to Google Reviews without any text. Click on the “Suggest” button to generate the responses. Users can then review and modify the generated text before enabling the Auto-Responses. 

Simply navigate to the reply assistant tab, where you'll be able to create a new Auto Response template as usual. From there, you'll be able to set the review rating criteria and then suggest the response to be used, all with Artificial Intelligence. 

Review Assistant (AI Suggested Replies)

Powered by chatGPT, you can now generate a reply to a review with the click of one button. The AI will have an understanding of the sentiment of the review, the rating of the review, the business name, the customer's name (if public), the business category, and the language they left the review in. Knowing all this, it will be able to generate a curated reply on demand  in more than 50 different languages (including German, French & Spanish)  

For users testing out the Unified Inbox (Feed), the team has incorporated AI capabilities to assist with crafting the perfect reply to customer feedback! Simply click on the Suggest Reply button to have the Review Assistant draft a reply based on the customer’s feedback. The suggested reply from the Review Assistant can be sent as is or modified to ensure the response is on brand and tailored to the feedback. This saves users time and provides a great starting point for creatively responding to customer feedback.

Additionally, our Review Assistant supports replying to reviews in multiple languages based on the language setting of the platform!

Review Enhancements

The Ultimate Companion for Unified Customer Engagement

Unified Inbox 

The Unified Inbox (or Feed) is a redesigned experience of the Feedback section where users can see and manage customer engagements. The Inbox builds on your favorite Feedback features with new enhancements to support social engagements (i.e., comments and posts), threaded conversations for  social comments, Location Group filtering, bulk replying, and AI capabilities. We are in the process of refining the experience, however, you can reach out to your Success Manager to test the new inbox, today! 

What makes our new Unified Inbox so special? Our Review Assistant can either suggest creative, context-driven review responses or auto-respond with unmatched speed and efficiency with just the click of a button. 

Location Data Management Enhancements

Precision Data Management for Your Local Business Listings

Scheduled Updates 

Users with this feature enabled will no longer need to wait until the publication date to make changes to their listings. Data fields in the Basic Data, Rich Data, and Photos & Videos tabs of a location profile can now be scheduled to publish at a later date and time. 

A new option to “Schedule for Later” is made available when updating location profiles individually or when using the Bulk Editor. Users then confirm the date and time for their publication to go live.

All scheduled updates will be compiled into a new “Scheduled Updates” tab in the location profile where you can view, edit and delete any pending publications.

This means you can now plan ahead with the ability to schedule individual or bulk changes to local business information — weeks or months in advance — and automatically sync those changes across Uberall’s entire directory ecosystem. 

You can schedule unlimited updates across different fields for the same location with different publication dates. All updates will be published based on that location’s timezone. 

Listings Photo Compression

We’ve made it easier than ever to upload photos to listings. Uberall will now automatically compress large photos to ensure the file meets the required specifications of directories. This means that users will no longer be required to manage the file size prior to uploading. 

Listings Enhancements

Effortless Listing Management — for Everyone

Listings Page Upgrade

Our focus is not just on enhancing the design and overall user experience of our Listings solution but more importantly, to empower our Partners and customers through an intuitive approach to improving the user experience. Our new upgrade will provide greater clarity over your clients' listings, highlight necessary actions, and share essential information with more transparency. 

We’re therefore thrilled to present these enhancements for a more intuitive experience:

• Intuitive icons for easy comprehension.
• A concise summary of your clients' listings upfront to give you a clear snapshot of their status.
• A dedicated section highlighting actions you or your client need to take
• Handy pop-ups that offer in-depth information for each listing, should you require more details.
• Google publishing states to better reflect the real status of your clients' listing on Google.

Social Enhancements

Master Your Multi-Location Social Strategy with Uberall Social

New Social Publishing UI

There’s a fresh new look, feel and flow to our social capabilities. Our new interface seamlessly integrates a suite of powerful features, ensuring swift and intuitive navigation, template creation, image editing, and on-brand content publishing.

Let’s take a look at some of the new features that are going to make our social solution more usable than ever from the head office marketer to the location manager…

Social Templates

Efficiently organize brand-approved posting templates into designated folders and assign them to the appropriate businesses or location groups.

Empower location managers with the tools and content they need to excel on social media, all while maintaining brand consistency across multiple locations. With our advanced search, your teams can pinpoint the perfect template in moments.

Social Post Image Editing

Our team has also expanded the capability of the new Social Publisher by adding an inline image editor that enables users to post the perfect image to their social pages! Users just click on the image edit button to launch the image editing tools such as rotating, cropping, adjustments, filters, and more! 

Locator & Local Pages Enhancements

Boost Discoverability & User Experience with the Self Build Locator

We're driving up the customization ante in our Self Build Locator to not only boost your client's digital storefront's discoverability in search but also to refine the user experience.  
 

Schema Settings

Users can now improve the visibility and search ranking of their local pages by using the new Schema Settings field in the Self Build Locator. The new field (located in the SEO tab) provides a list of ‘business types’ that help categorize the business and better inform web crawlers for indexing. 

More Hours 

Directories like Google use More Hours to help customers identify when particular services (e.g., pick-up, delivery, drive-through, etc.) are available and what the operating schedule is. This feature already exists in the platform today for listings and that same data can now be applied to Local Pages! Users can enable the Self Build Locator to set up 2 types of ‘More Hours’ to be displayed alongside the general hours of operation. 

Customer’s Favorite Store 

Customers visiting your locator can now designate their preferred store location as their 'Favorite.’ This will display that favorite location at the top of the locator list making it easy for customers to find the details and stay up to date with their frequented location. The Favorite Store feature can be enabled in the Locator tab of the Self Build Locator.

Coming Soon Locations

Businesses can now enable the Locator to display pages for locations that are ‘coming soon.’ This can be used to begin generating excitement and awareness for the location as it prepares for the grand opening! Coming soon locations display a label in the Locator and on the Local Page that identifies the location as coming soon and includes the open date. 

Industry Specific Enhancements

Google Lodging Information

Clients in the lodging industry (i.e., Hotels) can now take advantage of Google’s Lodging Attributes in the Rich Data tab of the location profile. A new section called “Amenities” is available just below the general Attributes for the profile making it easy to select lodging specific attributes that publish onto the Listing. 

Directly integrate your clients' hotel attributes into their Google Business profiles. This seamless update creates greater engagement, more conversions, and enriches your clients' digital presence. 

By presenting potential guests with comprehensive information directly on Google, your clients increase the likelihood of guests booking directly with their hotel — reducing commission costs and enhancing profit margins.

Request a Consultation

That concludes our walkthrough of our most recent Feature Releases. We appreciate all of the feedback on our platform that made these updates a priority. 

As we said at the beginning: if anything in this release note is unclear, you want to discuss your current plan or just want to find out how you can get more from our platform you can request a consultation by clicking on the button below and a dedicated rep will reach out to you shortly.