Citation verifications with phone trees

[copyjack]

We have several clients whose practices have phone trees enabled for their primary number, which means we aren't able to send automated verification calls for Google, Yelp, ExpressUpdate (Infogroup), YellowPages, etc. Sometimes our clients are able to temporarily disable their phone trees, and sometimes said site's support teams manually verify for us once we have proven our association with the businesses. We just wanted to reach out to see if anyone had alternative solutions or workarounds, since phone trees usually cause a significant hangup. Thanks!

[copyjack]

Hi Miriam,

I'm sorry to hear that phone trees are an issue for you, as well. Yes, other than the hope of temporarily disconnecting the phone tree, our only other option that we have found is to set up an @domain email and work with a site's support with that added authority. I hope that your teammates have some additional suggestions; looking forward to your response!

Jack

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Jackson,

Yes, I'm not a fan of phone trees either, particularly as Google doesn't really like them (they prefer numbers that connect directly), and what you've described about temporarily disabling them for phone verification has been the main advice I've seen for some years on this. However, and here's something interesting, Mike Blumenthal recently reported that verification options may be emerging that could bypass phone verification: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2016/02/15/google-mybusiness-now-surfacing-web-verify-option-2/

As for replacing a phone tree with something other than a live human being who directs calls to staff, I'm afraid I don't know. I will ask that some of my teammates pop by to see if anyone has any further suggestions about this.