In case you missed it in the flood of AI news and product rollouts surrounding us these days, Google recently revealed that it will place calls to businesses on your behalf. Meant as a time-saving tool, it will wait on hold for you, then text you when your spot in line finally reaches a live agent. Music to many ears.
This is similar to the functionality some companies offer to call you back when your spot in line comes up. Google is simply creating a third-party solution to handle the task. And when it comes to products and features that address real pain points – there are few consumer pain points bigger than this.
Known as “Talk to a Live Rep” Google pulls this off by running the call through the Google app for both Android and iOS, as well as the desktop version of the Chrome browser. Presumably, it also inherits some of the technology used in Google Voice, in terms of the telephony behind the scenes.
Some readers may also recognize this feature as similar to the “Hold for Me” feature that’s natively available on Pixel phones. Google says that Talk to a Live Rep goes a step further in also navigating a given phone tree to even get to the point of securing a spot in line to talk to a human.
True to Form
Breaking down the UX in greater detail, users will see a “request a call” button in search results if the feature is supported by a given business (see list below). From there, they can type in the reason for their call and then click to activate. They’ll then get a text and a link to join the call when a live rep is ready.
Though this sounds like a winner, a few questions arise, like how Google’s third-party magic will interface with a given company’s interactive voice response (IVR) system. When those systems ask for voice commands (e.g. “say your customer ID number”), will Google’s bots be able to process those prompts?
It seems that things could go awry when you set up two robots to speak to one another. And when a human agent finally gets on the phone, will they be confused when a Google bot greets them with instructions (paraphrasing) to hold while it fetches the customer/caller? How long will the agent wait?
We suppose that all of these questions are the reason that the feature is currently in open beta. True to form (more on that in a bit) Google is keen on performing a large-scale stress test of the feature to de-bug it and, more importantly, evaluate if it works well enough to release as an actual product.
To that end, “Talk to a Live Rep” is currently available for anyone signed up for Google’s Search Labs – its program for experimental features. And the companies that are currently compatible include Alaska Airlines, Delta, JetBlue, Best Buy, Costco, Walmart, Boost Mobile, Samsung, ADT, and State Farm.
The Disruptor and the Disrupted
Stepping back, though Google was late to the current wave of generative and conversational AI, it’s better positioned than most companies on the planet. That goes for its deep research in machine learning and its knowledge graph, which is essentially one giant AI training set for human intelligence.
Google got lots of grief for that late start, but as we noted at the time, the company will be just fine. Its issue is less about AI capability than an innovator’s dilemma. AI cannibalizes the 10-blue links ad inventory at the core of its business model. Serving one answer to a given query means fewer ad slots.
So now that Google has held out as long as it could, it’s leaning into AI because not doing so could be more damaging than cannibalization. It will just have to craft its AI integrations in ways that support its business, such as the automation tools in AdWords campaign creation, among other things.
So expect Google’s AI-based products and features to continue rolling out. The above is just the latest example. And based on Google’s product development persona, we’ll see lots of live experiments, hits & misses, and canceled products. The question today is if “Talk to a Live Rep” will make the cut.
