Latest news with #businesses


CBC
24 minutes ago
- Business
- CBC
Why restaurants in Quebec can now charge for reservation no-shows
Quebec restaurants are now allowed to charge up to $10 for each no-show. This applies to reservations of two or more people and restaurants will have to clearly inform customers that no-show charges may apply when making a booking.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
CallRail's Voice Assist Now Available to All Businesses
The trusted platform ensures businesses never miss a call again ATLANTA, July 17, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--For over 15 years, CallRail has helped businesses and marketing agencies attract more leads, convert more customers and make smarter marketing decisions. Today, CallRail is taking a monumental leap forward in that mission, announcing the general availability of Voice Assist, a 24/7 AI-powered voice assistant that answers, captures and qualifies inbound calls to ensure no opportunity is missed. Missed calls represent massive lost revenue for small businesses. CallRail's proprietary data, gathered from their customer base of more than 220,000 businesses and 7,000 marketing agencies, shows that 30% of calls go unanswered. For months, CallRail has been quietly revolutionizing the operations of companies in their oversubscribed Voice Assist beta program. During that time, beta customers have increased their answered calls by an average of 44%, all while efficiently qualifying leads and providing real time responses to customers around the clock. Now, any business can turn missed calls into real revenue. With Voice Assist, businesses and their marketing agencies can expect to: Converse with, capture and qualify leads, even when staff are unavailable, ensuring no calls are missed. Prioritize follow-up using AI-powered lead scoring, giving businesses a quantitative and qualitative view of lead quality, intent and urgency. Provide a seamless process for callers to book appointments. Integrate with 60+ tools to sync leads, call summaries and auto-tagged outcomes. Easily optimize marketing performance with attribution and intent signals delivered within a unified platform. Trust that their leads are being handled by a platform backed by enterprise level security and compliance certifications, and the scale that comes with millions of hours of experience in call handling and AI call analysis. "We cut unanswered calls in half with Voice Assist. It's made a huge difference in our lead flow," said Franco Aquino, Founder of REN Marketing LLC. Unmatched personalization to maximize conversion Unlike other AI voice agents on the market, Voice Assist can be set up in minutes, is completely personalized to the business and is built for lead conversion. Pulling from the business's existing website content and past call transcripts, Voice Assist instantly learns how to converse effectively on behalf of a business – no manual setup or tedious scripting required. Customers can customize everything from Voice Assist's tone of voice and hours of availability to its automatic text responses. Customers can even set conditions for when the call should be transferred to a team member so businesses can prioritize high-value opportunities. "I was blown away by how much the agent knew about my business – it was incredibly accurate," said Scott Clift, CEO of Westpark Equity Group. More Than an AI Receptionist – A Smarter Marketing Engine Voice Assist is integrated seamlessly within the broader CallRail lead engagement platform, giving customers a unified view of every lead. "We rely on CallRail as the central hub for tracking, analyzing and optimizing every marketing dollar we spend for our clients. Voice Assist adds another layer – now we're capturing high-intent leads even after hours, qualifying them automatically and feeding that data right back into our reporting and ad platforms. It's made our campaigns smarter and our results stronger," said Michael Hurley, COO, Einstein Industries. By adding Voice Assist to the CallRail platform, marketing teams now have access to an AI voice assistant that also optimizes campaigns. Examples include: Conversion signals: CallRail will automatically tag when a caller speaking with the AI agent has requested an appointment, which can be integrated back into Google Ads to generate higher quality leads. Attribution insights: Marketers know what campaigns, keywords and channels are working, aggregated into one platform, whether the call is answered by their human receptionist or Voice Assist. Lead qualification: Voice Assist captures caller intake details and intent, then scores leads, allowing marketers to quickly decide which lead should be prioritized for follow up. Transcriptions, summaries and sentiment: businesses can quickly gather full context to provide personalized follow up to the best leads, faster. "Voice Assist unlocks the full potential of every call," said Marc Ginsberg, CEO at CallRail. "It captures intent, streamlines follow-ups and gives businesses a faster, smarter way to turn calls into revenue." To learn more about Voice Assist, visit About CallRailCallRail is the lead engagement platform that makes it easy for businesses to attract more leads, convert more customers, and optimize their marketing. Serving more than 220,000 businesses worldwide, CallRail's AI-powered solutions help businesses attribute each call, text, chat and form to their marketing journey, use insights from their conversations to better understand their buyers, and eliminate missed opportunities with AI that can handle lead interactions 24/7. CallRail has grown from the G2 top-rated inbound call tracking solution to include Form Tracking, Conversation Intelligence®, Premium Conversation Intelligence™, Convert Assist and Voice Assist. CallRail's award winning platform integrates with dozens of leading marketing and sales software, and offers affiliate, agency, and technology partnership opportunities, helping businesses earn, grow, and build with CallRail. For more information, visit View source version on Contacts Media Contact PAN for CallRailcallrail@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data


Bloomberg
5 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Tariff Risk Nudged More Firms Closer to Default, Moody's Says
The number of companies at the greatest risk of defaulting are at an 11-month high, as uncertainty around US trade and tariffs worsened credit conditions, according to a Moody's Ratings report. In the second quarter, 16 companies were added to the cohort of businesses with the highest default risk, according to Moody's. The group now stands at 241 companies, the report shows.


The Sun
11 hours ago
- Business
- The Sun
Wage rate growth slows as bank interest rate cut ‘more likely' next month
WORKERS' pay across the UK has slowed as businesses face increased staffing costs making an interest rate cut "more likely". Average weekly earnings, excluding and including bonuses, rose by 5% between March and May, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). 1 When adjusted for inflation, annual wage growth in real terms was 1.1% for regular pay and 1% for total pay across the same three months. However, this is slightly higher than economists had predicted, with those polled by Reuters forecasting it would slow to 4.9%. The latest wage figures show wage growth is slowing, with ONS figures between January and March showing annual wage growth in real terms when adjusted for inflation for both regular pay and total pay was 2.6%.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Fairfield restaurants worry trash strike could spoil Taste of Downtown event
Fairfield businesses are preparing for the "Taste in Downtown" event while dealing with overflowing trash due to a strike by Republic Services workers.