UrbanCircle is an online platform connecting families in UAE with a wide range of kids-related institutes and service-providers making it a go-to-source for families whenever they need help. That is why there are many benefits of joining UrbanCircle for you as a potential partner company such as:

• Free marketing and a totally new sales channel to bring you leads: you can focus on your core business, while we take care of your marketing and online presence.
• Maximizing the utilization of your staff which will make your business more profitable and enable you to potentially grow and expand your business.
• Accessing untapped customer segments such as new-movers to Dubai, visitors or simply families who might visit the site for another service but then see your company offerings and get interested.
• Promoting your company and service providers and build your reputation.

Visit our homepage, click on “Join As an Institute” and fill in the sign-up form asking details about your company and your services. Once you submit the form, UrbanCircle will review your application and if you are eligible, you’ll be contacted for an initial meeting followed by a second meeting to record the videos of your service providers you want to include in UrbanCircle. You will be requested to assign an Authorized Company Employee ‘ACE’ who will be in charge of responding to booking requests through UrbanCircle and keeping the website up-to-date with your company and services information. Your ACE will then receive log-in credentials to access the Company Portal of UrbanCircle and he/she can start uploading your service provider profiles or courses right away. Once they are approved by UrbanCircle you are good to go – you have a totally new sales channel and you will begin to get new business in no time.

We advise that the ACE is someone who is already in charge of arranging the bookings for your company such as the scheduling coordinator, secretary or the business assistant.

Below are the main responsibilities of Authorized Company Employee ‘ACE’:

• Responding to all new booking requests in 24 hours through UrbanCircle portal.
• Responding to clients’ scheduling change requests through UrbanCircle portal.
• Keeping the website up-to-date with your company and services information.
• Adding new service providers, session packages or courses your company offers when available.

Yes, to ensure everyone is protected and all roles and responsibilities are clear, we will jointly be signing a Sales Partnership Agreement. Parents also need to accept Terms & Conditions and our Privacy Policy in order to use UrbanCircle for their bookings.

Sure – you get to choose which services or staff you would like to promote in UrbanCircle and you can change your offerings as you wish including new staff/services or send us an email at partnerships@urbancircle.ae to disable status of your service providers that get fully booked. When they have available hours, you can e-mail us again to enable their status on the portal.

Pricing is at the total discretion of companies as long as you are not charging more than any other sales channel or direct sales. However we advice that you keep your prices competitive to get more business, especially when you are a new joiner and as you build up a reputation within the UrbanCircle community with more bookings and high ratings then you can consider revising if and when necessary.

There’s no membership or subscription fee for Institutes as we are at the process of building our circle of partner companies. Only when you get bookings through UrbanCircle, you would pay a small percentage as commission which drops down as the amount of monthly transactions through UrbanCircle increase. So the more business you have through UrbanCircle, the lower percentage of commission you pay and if you are not getting any new business it is simply free marketing!

For now, UrbanCircle does not accept online payments so you will be booked through UrbanCircle but paid directly through your typical forms of payment. You’ll be responsible to pay all due commissions to UrbanCircle on a monthly basis. Once online payments through UrbanCircle are launched, clients will be able to book and pay online and then UrbanCircle will process payments on a monthly basis as the amount of commission you pay is calculated on the total monthly transactions. Once a payment is processed, you can expect it to hit your bank account within 3-5 business days.

When a family is interested in one of the service providers or courses from your company and they want to make a booking, they will be sending a booking request with family details (name, phone number, email etc) and booking details (time, duration, their kids’ ages and the address if it is an at home service). This booking request will then go to the e-mail of the Authorized Company Employee ‘ACE’ of your company who has been appointed by you as the person in charge of bookings/scheduling. The ACE is then expected to check the availability of the service requested and respond within 24 hours by clicking the respond button on the request email. If the service is available, ACE can click ‘Accept’ right away and the family will be notified that the booking has been confirmed for the requested time and duration via email. If the service is not available for the requested time or duration the ACE can reach the family via phone number provided in the initial booking request and can agree on a revised booking or the booking might not proceed which means ACE will have to decline the request. In the case of a new time being agreed the ACE is expected to enter the revised details on UrbanCircle.

There are many things you can do. Here are a few tips:

• Carefully update the tags that will help your company services to be found from our search engine.
• Your average star rating and comments matter hugely, try to have more and more happy customers and encourage them to star-rate you and post positive comments about you in UrbanCircle.
• When you get a booking request, reply as soon as possible and if the requested time is not available call the family immediately to arrange for an alternative booking.
• Update the availability calendars for service providers, and update your timings to cover more hours.
• Make sure your company stands out by putting detailed information about your service providers and courses.
• ALWAYS make sure the information on the website is accurate and up to date.
• If you keep your cancellations to a minimum especially avoid last minute cancellations.

There are so many benefits for you to keep transactions registered within UrbanCircle:

• More transactions within UrbanCircle means that you are a preferred company within our community and that definitely increases your chances to get more new business
• You will rank higher in the search engine another factor which will increase your changes of getting business
• The more transactions you report will decrease the commission percentage you pay
• Last but not least, this is part of the Sales Partnership Agreement. UrbanCircle aims to build a community of trust and we trust that we everyone will benefiting from being part of our community. It’s important to keep all of your bookings on the UrbanCircle platform for the Trust and Safety of yourself and other members.

While cancellations create a poor parent experience and negatively affect your reliability in the circle, we understand that there may be times when it’s unavoidable. However, minimizing cancellations is critical for your own reputation and the perception of UrbanCircle service providers as a reliable source.

If you need to cancel a booking, let your ‘Authorized Company Employee’ (ACE) know as soon as possible to minimize the negative consequences for the family. Then the ACE needs to go to “All Bookings” under company account details, select that booking and send cancellation request. An automated email will go to both UrbanCircle admin and the parent. UrbanCircle will get in touch with the customer to provide a replacement if the family wishes.

UrbanCircle will review the information provided after you submit your form and it will stay inactive meaning it will not be displayed on the website until UrbanCircle team approves it. Meanwhile, our team might call you for clarifications required or for assigning the right tags, allocation to correct categories. You can expect to receive an email to inform you about the activation of the course and/or service provider within 1 working day. If you don’t see it active after 1 working day, you can contact partnerships@urbancircle.ae and get clarifications.

At each booking request, your company’s ‘Authorized Company Employee’ (ACE) will receive an email about booking details. Once ACE logs into UrbanCircle, he/she can also see all your company’s bookings under “All Bookings” which can be accessed by clicking on ACE account name that appears on top right corner of the homepage.

‘Authorized Company Employee’ (ACE) can click on “Company” under his account settings and edit all previously provided information. UrbanCircle will receive notifications about changes made.

‘Authorized Company Employee’ (ACE) can click on “Company” under his account settings and see all service providers and courses listed. ACE can click on “Edit” and update all information. UrbanCircle will receive notifications about changes made.

‘Authorized Company Employee’ (ACE) can click on “Company” under his account settings and see all service providers and courses listed. If you would like to deactivate a listing you can send an email to partnerships@urbancircle.ae  and we will do it for you. If you would like to delete a service provider because he/she is no longer working for your company, you can delete it under “Company” settings.

Yes, ACE can create new courses/ camps or update the company’s existing course/service provider information by changing the prices and highlighting it in the Title (Ramadan package, Eid Promotion etc).

The information you provide about the course should be clear and concise, with some details about your Institute, for which children (what level) the course will be fit for, why the child should join for this course, whether there will be a certification provided upon completing etc. Please always consider potential questions/concerns by families or what they should know about this course when you are entering details.

Yes, you can post courses that will be available in the near future but it should be clear in the course details that the course has a future starting date.

If a course has different prices based on certain criteria, Authorized Company Employee (ACE) should upload all variations of that course as separate courses, with different titles clearly differentiating the variations.

You can upload as many as you have, there is no cap on the total number of courses or service providers uploaded by your institute. But please note that UrbanCircle needs to approve the courses/service providers before they appear on the website.

No, transportation fees should be included in your hourly rate if you are allowing your service providers to work in off-site locations. We are planning to have partnerships with private transportation companies in near future so that UrbanCircle members will get a discount code for bookings.