Glossary

Definitions

Digital presence

The full set of touchpoints through which a customer can find, verify and contact a business online: website, Google Business Profile, reviews, social accounts and messaging channels. A digital presence is complete when those elements reinforce each other rather than existing separately.

Google Business Profile

The free business listing that displays a company in Google Search and Google Maps: contact details, hours, photos, services and reviews. For a local contractor it is often a new customer's first point of contact, before the website.

Local SEO

Optimizing a business for geographically-scoped searches such as "plumber near me". It rests mainly on the Google Business Profile, consistent contact details across the web, reviews, and website content tied to a service area.

Conversational AI assistant

Software that holds a natural-language conversation with a prospect on a messaging channel: it understands the request, asks the missing questions and triggers an action (sending an estimate, booking an appointment, handing off to a human).

Lead qualification

Determining, before any human involvement, whether an incoming request matches what the business does, on what timeline and at what budget. A qualified request can be accepted or declined deliberately.

Estimate

An indicative price range given before a site visit, based on reference rates. It exists to unblock the customer's decision; unlike a firm quote issued after diagnosis, it does not bind the business.

Human handoff (escalation)

The mechanism by which an automated assistant stops and passes the conversation to a person, along with its context. It triggers on cases it should not handle alone: complex requests, disputes, or a customer explicitly asking for a human.

Missed call

An inbound call that goes unanswered and uncalled-back. In emergency trades it rarely converts later — the customer simply calls the next professional. It is a contractor's largest invisible revenue loss.

Conversion rate

The share of incoming requests that reach a target outcome — an appointment booked, a quote accepted, a job completed. Measured stage by stage, it shows where requests are being lost.

Review collection

Systematically asking for a customer review after a job, at the right moment and through the right channel. Review volume and recency weigh as heavily as the average score in local visibility.

Reputation management

Monitoring and handling what is publicly said about a business: replying to reviews, correcting wrong information, tracking mentions. A negative review handled in public reassures more than the absence of negative reviews.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management: the tool that centralizes a business's contacts, conversations, quotes and follow-ups. It prevents a request from going nowhere simply because it only ever existed inside one isolated conversation.

Messaging channel

A platform on which a customer can write to a business: WhatsApp Business, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, TikTok, YouTube. Each channel has its own conventions and its own expected response time.

Service area

The geographic perimeter a business travels within, sometimes with different terms depending on distance. Declaring it explicitly avoids handling out-of-area requests and improves local search relevance.

HVAC

Heating, ventilation and air conditioning: the field covering installation, maintenance and repair of a building's thermal comfort and air quality equipment. The work is strongly seasonal, peaking in heatwaves and cold snaps.

FCFA (XOF)

The West African CFA franc, the currency of Côte d'Ivoire. It is pegged to the euro at a fixed rate (€1 = 655.96 FCFA), which is why the same price can be quoted in both currencies without exchange-rate risk.