Your business listing in ChatGPT: what changes for SMEs

What Businesses in ChatGPT is

It is called Businesses in ChatGPT and comes in two parts, according to PYMNTS. The first is Business Hub, a dashboard where a company claims and verifies its listing, updates its information and, if it sells products, adds a feed with prices and availability. Shopify merchants can connect their store.

The second is Business Agents: a business's own assistant that customers can talk to separately, inside ChatGPT, to ask about its products or services. For now these are only open to eligible ecommerce and online service businesses in the United States; OpenAI says it will expand to more markets and categories.

The listing itself is not limited to the US. According to Unite.AI, eligible businesses can claim it wherever ChatGPT is available, and at first only those with a website; a Shopify store is not required. Let's Data Science adds that OpenAI decides who can join the beta based on industry, location and its own verification checks. A claimed listing carries a blue tick, but claiming it does not guarantee a higher placement or more sales.

What is new for a business owner is the data. Business Hub shows aggregated figures, among others: how often your business appears in answers, clicks to your website and the conversation topics you come up in. They only show once there are enough conversations, and the business never sees anyone's chats.

A Sunday with the shutter down

Imagine Begoña runs a neighbourhood florist's with her brother. They open Monday to Saturday and, for the past two years, have also made wedding arrangements to order. One Sunday evening a customer messages her: she is standing outside the closed shutter. She had asked an AI assistant for a florist open nearby, and it suggested Begoña's, with opening hours that stopped being true a long time ago.

Begoña goes looking for where those hours came from. They are on a page of her website she made years ago and nobody has touched since. Her site says nothing about weddings either, which now make up half of her orders.

Why do assistants repeat old facts about your business?

Because an AI assistant answers with whatever it finds published about you, and in many small businesses that was written once and left alone. The website was built by someone who has since moved on, the hours changed over the summer and the new service only exists on Instagram or in the head of whoever handles it.

And some customers no longer search Google and compare three websites: they ask an assistant and go with the answer. According to OpenAI, as cited by Unite.AI, ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people every week. Questions like “where can I buy”, “who can do this for me” or “what time does it open” get answered there, sometimes without a visit to your website.

What a wrong answer costs you

A wrong detail gives no warning. Begoña's customer did not ring to complain; she messaged in good faith, but someone else would simply have gone to another florist. And anyone asking about wedding flowers who does not see you in the answer has no idea you exist.

That is what Business Hub data is for, once it reaches a business like yours: seeing whether you are mentioned and for what. If you are named for something you no longer do and never for what sells best, that is your clue.

What can you do today about your business listing in ChatGPT?

You do not need a claimed listing to get started. The first step is knowing what is being said about you, and you can check that this week:

• Ask ChatGPT about your business the way a customer would: opening hours, where you are, what services you offer and what the usual job costs.
• Note every detail that is wrong or missing, and look for where it might come from on your website or social media.
• Fix your website first: it is your source and the one you control. Make sure your hours, area and services are written down and up to date.
• If you are eligible, claim and verify your listing in Business Hub and review your details there.
• Once you have data, check each month which topics you are mentioned for and compare them with what you actually want to sell.

In Begoña's case the list of mistakes would fit on half a page: old opening hours and a missing service. Fixing them on the website is what gives the next answer a chance of being right.

Your details, current and in one place

Before changing anything, we get to know your business: what you sell, to whom and how a customer finds you today. With that clear, we tidy up the information you publish and build whatever is needed to keep it current without relying on anyone's memory. That is the work of our technology consulting.

We saw it with Quitaplagas. Many of its service requests relied on phone calls and writing details down by hand, and information got lost. We built an app that guides customers through requesting a service, even in an emergency, and an internal dashboard to organise and prioritise every request. First contact now arrives with clear, well-organised information, which is what we aim for with everything you publish.

Where Begoña would start

You do not need to rebuild your website or set up an agent to begin. For Begoña, the first version would be one page with her real opening hours and another describing her wedding arrangements, both well written. The verified listing can come next, and its data will show you what else is worth changing.

If you would like to see how it would work for you, we walk you through it step by step (in Spanish).