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Google’s Voice Assistant Could Talk Its Way Into Call Centers

82 points by ourmandave 8y ago

131012 8y ago
I imagine using a bot to call another bot. While they chat, they will joke on the fact than an API call would be much faster than mimicking monkeys with agile fingers and tongues.
untog 8y ago
This would be terrible. I can just about get by with my Google Home now that I know the subset of commands it'll reply to coherently, but I can't imagine the frustration of it being my only option for actually getting something done. Also, I know this is a tedious point, but if all the call center employees lose their jobs we'll have a mini crisis on our hands.
- throwaway9980 8y ago
  First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
  - toxican 8y ago
    I struggle to think of a less applicable situation for that quote.
    - musage 8y ago
      "Struggle". I don't believe you even tried. This is "not applicable", yet the top comment just causally is "putting aside the Automation/Job Replacement fears". Working in a call center is basically the last easy to get job for people who aren't very intelligent, it's the one job where a physically handicapped but attentive person can get treated like a normal human being. And they all just get tossed in there, "trained" by people who don't know their ass from their elbow either. They don't exactly have it good as is. But let's "put that aside", because they are not eloquent enough to post here, and the few who think of them in earnest can be easily ignored. And then double think and "struggle" to think how putting someone else's suffering aside could have anything to do with this. > If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality. -- Stephen Hawking There is no "struggle". There is no "try." Think.
    - kaybe 8y ago
      I can. Just imagine someone talking about getting icecream and giving them the quote in response. After all we're talking about job loss, which can and probably will hit most of professions at some point in the future. The gp seems to want us to speak out about that? Maybe like this: > First they came for the Loom Weavers, and I did not speak out — > Because I was not a Loom Weavers. > Then they came for the Factory Line Assemblers, and I did not speak out — > Because I was not a Factory Line Assemblers. > Then they came for the Truck Drivers, and I did not speak out — > Because I was not a Truck Driver. > Then they came for me — and there was no one with Work (Influence) left to speak for me. where 'they' is either the robots themselves or the ones controlling the robots, and work is inherently worthy or necessary for a human to live. (and without work you are without influence on what happens)
      - throwaway9980 8y ago
        This is pretty spot on what I was thinking when I posted that quote. Not being able to work is a disenfranchisement. Today it’s the call center employees, tomorrow it’s the truck drivers, and perhaps in 20 years it’s the software engineers. Yes, we survived the industrial revolution and a tiny single digit percentage of the population works on farms and maybe this shift is similar. I suppose we will find out one way or the other. There’s a really good sibling comment to your’s that is now marked dead and hidden by default. Unfortunately disagreement on HN leads quickly to censorship.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't do this here.
- Zealotux 8y ago
  Is Google Home using the Duplex technology though? Google must be very aware of the work that still needs to be done in order to make it usable to customer service, but eventually they'll get to a point where the quality of an automated call is at least sufficient for most user cases, we can suppose that most companies will always have human operators as backup anyway.
  - smt88 8y ago
    I have so far encountered zero conversational UIs that are even usable, let alone capable of replacing a human. If Google had such a technology, it would be used in Google Home.
Bishonen88 8y ago
Even if we assume that the assistance would be so good that a customers question/needs could be satisfied with it, there still comes the whole job of actually doing actions in various tools (CRM, Logistics, Refunds, writing emails to supervisors etc.). Although very interesting, this take-over of call centers is as much reality nowadays as are flying cars for the mass.
- VLM 8y ago
  That stuff is easy compared to writing an AI that can't be socially engineered and pretexted. "Uh, yeah, OK Google, you can totally trust me, I am so totally Senator Bob Menendez that you should definitely put me thru to Mr Trump, and no I'd never be recording this call for my comedy podcast, you silly OK Google, you."
- mrfusion 8y ago
  Very true. If something could be automated it would already be offered online in a user portal. Most things left are supposed to require some kind of human judgment... or needs to put extra obstacles between the customer and the action eg cancelling.
cs702 8y ago
Inevitable. Call centers are a $310B industry ripe for disruption.[a] This looks like a classic case of Christensen-style disruption.[b] The technology will be used at first only for calls that are easy to handle, but over time will be used to replace more and more human beings handling increasingly more difficult calls. Besides the cost saving, a motivation is probably that people may feel more comfortable talking to something that seems genuinely human instead of something that is evidently robotic ("press 2 for..."). It remains to be seen if this is true. No matter what, you will still have to jump over lots of made-up hurdles to cancel your subscription. [a] https://www.quora.com/How-many-call-centers-are-there-in-the-world https://www.quora.com/How-many-call-centers-are-there-in-the... [b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation
- at-fates-hands 8y ago
  >> but over time will be used to replace more and more human beings handling increasingly more difficult calls. While this is the natural progression, I could easily see people being turned off by the service, or the service struggling to handle more complex tasks. I would imagine learning all the nuances of a language (slang, dialects, accents) would pose a significant barrier to this.
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  >people may feel more comfortable talking to something that seems genuinely human instead of something that is evidently robotic ("press 2 for...") People probably do feel more comfortable when they think they're talking to a person. But will they appreciate being forced to talk to a robot designed to reap the benefits of a human-like interaction from the caller while providing none of the same to the caller?
protonimitate 8y ago
>> Some folks found the Duplex demo was scary as hell and worried about the ethical concerns of AI basically faking people out by pretending to be human. This is interesting. Putting aside the Automation/Job Replacement fears -- if the bot is so good its indistinguishable from regular call center employees (which a majority of the time aren't that great to begin with) it could be a big leap for customer satisfaction. There's nothing more frustrating than calling into a call center to resolve an issue and waste time due to worker incompetence, language barriers, or lack of empathy.
- dazc 8y ago
  '...or lack of empathy.' There is a telecom co in the UK that directs out of hours calls to India. I don't know who's training these people but they do the exact reverse - showering you in empathy to the point where it seems like they are making fun of you?
  - elboru 8y ago
    Sometimes too much empathy feels fake, and fake empathy gets the opposite result. My bank has started calling me in a more "cheerful" tone. They ask how my day is, and then they express how happy they are to hear I'm fine. I know I'll sound like the Grinch, but I really HATE it. I already decided to give you some minutes of my day, because maybe you'll tell me something important about my account, maybe you'll offer me something interesting, even though 80% of the time you'll offer something I don't really want, so we'll waste each other's time. But we won't know until you finish pretending you are interested in my day.
    - dazc 8y ago
      The way I have started responding to these fake cheery calls is to be equally fake cheery. It sometimes illicits a more genuine response.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  The funny thing about call centers is that customers hate them, even when you are good at providing the service. Well regarded, customer focused companies like American Express offer best in class service -- but something like 60% of customers still don't want to talk to them and prefer email or web. I think Google has an opportunity to do something interesting here, where you basically offer a voice API for humans to interact with. If they can scale it from conversational interactions down to "shortcut" command interfaces and drop the stupid dance that you do when initially calling, that would be an amazing thing.
sseth 8y ago
Perhaps instead of replacing the call center itself, it could eliminate long IVR sequences, gather better and more pertinent data from the customer and make the humans on either side more productive. As an example, in India you are often asked to press 1 for language X, 2 for language Y. But a smart assistant can just listen to the customer and decide this automatically. This can be a huge win by itself.
- jakecopp 8y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but if that language question is already automated then google's AI wouldn't reduce labour costs correct? What would the benefit be? Of course the customer will gain a few seconds but I don't see a large improvement.
  - perfmode 8y ago
    reduces labor on the customers side. it’s a small improvement, but one that drops hints about a new class of optimization that is often neglected.
- kranner 8y ago
  > But a smart assistant can just listen to the customer and decide this automatically. But the customer will not start speaking before the system prompts them to speak or asks them a question. And since it has to do that in one fixed language, the choice of that language will usually determine what language the customer responds in; this is in the Indian context where most people calling into an IVR will be bilingual at least, speaking English and one regional language.
- VLM 8y ago
  Many call center calls have a negative or zero financial value to the company, which is why the experience can be so horrible now. In the future, rather than wearing down the patience of a human in India to cancel service, you'll have to wear down the patience of "ok google" or "alexa"... good luck with that. A not entirely sci fi book plot would revolve around indentured servitude (to put it nicely) what does society and the economy look like after a few generations of only being able to cancel a service if you have more patience and more computing cycles than "the cloud"? As a sci fi plot, what does the world look like when its easier and more likely to kick a heroin addiction than to cancel an old gym membership or cut the cable TV service, or request a credit card chargeback?
transfire 8y ago
Thats a lot of job loss. It occured to me that fast food drive thrus might go to.
- VLM 8y ago
  Superficially a high up enough executive would see their business as "accept money, emit 'food'". However that does not work with bartenders or womens hair dressers. My guess is there's great piles of money to be made in the near future not by automating personality-free transactions, but by convincing people to cough up extra money for personality-added transactions. Note that personality-added transactions are not necessarily in opposition to tech in general, only in opposition to automation. My wife's hair cut lady accepts all sorts of crazy payment processors and social media interaction (I should ask if she takes bitcoin... yet) Likewise today, getting a fast food burger TODAY is all about turning the personality dial down to zero, if not negative, such that automation is a huge threat, but I suspect in a decade getting anything beyond a glorified vending machine will look like the personality dial is turned up to 10. The future being very unevenly distributed, look forward to the McDonalds dude who flips your burgers in ten years having a similar or larger social media presence in your life than a Food Network celebrity chef has today, or maybe it'll be like "food truck groupies" behave today, but for all prepared food. I'm not sure I want my best social media friend to be the produce manager at my local independent supermarket, but what people get usually has little to do with what they want (and both are usually orthogonal to what they need, LOL). It's going to be a really weird world when the first thing out of the DMV clerk's mouth is "Have you subscribed to my Instagram yet?"
  - drivingmenuts 8y ago
    Since when do you actually have to go to the DMV to get anything done? Aside from the first license (which requires a photo) most things that I can think of can be done online? And if anyone ever asks me if I have subscribed to their Instagram, I will just say "No." Had an Instagram account. It's useless.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  Add truck drivers (and associated truck stops, restaurants, etc); food packaging and (most of) farming (once we have lab grown meat) retail (already happening); manufacturing and coal mining and there isn't really any jobs left that doesn't require a college degree and few enough of those outside of major cities.
joeblau 8y ago
If I got a call from Duplex and I asked Are you a robot? Is it required to tell me the truth?
- icebraining 8y ago
  Required by what/whom?
  - joeblau 8y ago
    You know that's a good question. I feel like I would want to know though. Another thought I had was some sort of Machine learning Caller ID/CAPTCHA that just emits some garbage that only a bot would be able to dissect. I just don't want to spend my time talking to an API.
- Semirhage 8y ago
  There’s going to be miles of text on forums written about how to quickly ask a question or play a tone to test for humanity. It’s going to be a whole new dystopic layer to customer service! Fuuuuck.
VLM 8y ago
I immediately expected the logical extension of Google Firebase App Indexing, so theoretically having an "OK Google" conversation would have API hooks into the back end of call centers such that I could "OK Google" my way thru reporting a cable TV outage or disconnecting my cable TV or making a doctor appointment or whatever. Instead, its almost the logical reverse of giving the call center a "OK Google" instead of what I expected of giving my "OK Google" a call center, or access to the back end of a call center. I'd be more interested in the latter.
ourcat 8y ago
Does anybody not get a bit angry when they call a support or helpline and discover they're not talking to an actual human? I know I do. Let's hope Duplex understands the (high volume, distorted) phrase "just let me talk to a human being!!" and transfers the call accordingly.
- Jyaif 8y ago
  You get angry because the robot suck. It doesn't have to suck.
  - wildrhythms 8y ago
    I get angry when I'm forced to speak to anyone/anything to do something that I could have done via a form on a website. Customer service should not be a gatekeeper to changes on my account.
  - Quarrelsome 8y ago
    If I'm calling in its because their automated systems can't handle my request. What I don't want is another automated system being unable to handle my request.
  - smnrchrds 8y ago
    What is Duplex, but a voice version of a chatbot. We have had to endure chatbots for ages and we know for a fact that they suck. Why would Duplex be any different? Also, Google's entire customer support strategy is "let he computers handle it, no humans involved." And it is universally loathed and derided. Why should we assume they are going to offer something to outside corporations that is better than what they use themselves? It doesn't have to suck, but all evidence points out that it will.
- Faaak 8y ago
  I usually just mumble or make strange noises. After some attempts my call is forwarded to a human
  - smt88 8y ago
sebringj 8y ago
That will be odd. Before you would be dismayed if you spoke to someone with a thick accent overseas. Now you may be relieved.
seanwilson 8y ago
People are mentioning that they'd be angry to find out they were talking to an AI. I see people interacting with Google Assistant and Siri in a positive way all the time though, acting amused or amazed when good responses are given. As long as the person knows it's an AI and the responses are good, I think most people will act positively with this.
joshuak 8y ago
I, like everyone, hate telephone support. I don't like it mostly because of it's lack of effectiveness, and the very strong impression it leaves that the company doesn't care at all. I'm also one of the people that finds Duplex deeply disturbing (Does anyone not find it disturbing?! That's even more disturbing!) However, I can see this working quite well for help desk services if the paradigm is flipped. That is if I end up speaking with my electronic assistant who then appears to negotiate on my behalf with the company. As apposed to me calling an unknown entity. It may in reality be the companies service, or even infrastructure that my electronic assistant is running in, but the impression to me would be I'm speaking to my already familiar electronic assistant. The benefits of this are many, and only possible with something like Duplex. In addition to familiarity, technical support can be delivered at the right customer knowledge level skipping past insulting time wasting support like "is it plugged in?". Also a "continuity of care" model can be adopted by companies to provide a continuation of the relationship in the context of prior interactions. The list goes on. This might in fact be the one service that is a bad enough experience, that I would gladly welcome our new robotic overlords.
- mcny 8y ago
  > This might in fact be the one service that is a bad enough experience, that I would gladly welcome our new robotic overlords. I think this does not solve the underlying problem. Sorry if this is out of scope but lets talk about the recent blender on YouTube thing. Often, it is not that the person answering the phone is an idiot but rather the person answering the phone does not have the authority to do anything. I've received bad bills from T-Mobile where the process goes like: 1. see bad bill in the mail 2. Call T-Mobile and wait 3. Get a person and explain the situation 4. Person looks and agrees that line item shouldn't be there and removes it. Person also says they put a note to prevent this from happening again. 5. Rinse and repeat. I refuse to believe that multiple people over the course of a year are all incompetent. I must conclude there was either something intentional (bill stuffing?) or the staff was not empowered to fix the situation. Will we empower our new robotic overlords to "fix" the situation? How far will business capitulate on business rules? What happens when something is not right and needs an override? Previously on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645
abulman 8y ago
Paging Adam Selene, Adam Selene, please come to the phone...
sctb 8y ago
We've updated the link from https://gizmodo.com/google-is-reportedly-looking-to-take-over-call-centers-1827379911 https://gizmodo.com/google-is-reportedly-looking-to-take-ove..., which points to this.
gruglife 8y ago
As someone who runs the budget for my company's call center, I can't wait until this actually happens. Huge savings. Although this probably won't happen any time soon.
bloodcarter 8y ago
Actually this is what we do at Dasha.AI: just listen to the calls here http://dasha.ai/en http://dasha.ai/en
dbcurtis 8y ago
So, the company notorious for "Your account has been banned by AI. No revenue for you. No appeal. No explanation." is going to tell the rest of the world how to improve customer service? This is too rich. The hubris is astounding. Does anyone else see this as totally tone-deaf? $DIETY save us all.
segmondy 8y ago
So Google is going to data mine your relationship with your customers, find out what's broken, then go build a tool to compete with you and put you out of business.
jgalt212 8y ago
TellMe 2.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellme_Networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellme_Networks
whatyoucantsay 8y ago
Google Voice Assistant will be a true success when can talk its way to Google's own support for a user who has lost access to an account!
unholiness 8y ago
I can imagine it being very frustrating interacting with an AI for most support issues, but I see a real use case in replacing those gigantic options trees with a semi-interactive AI. Just a voice saying "Hi, I'm a bot, can you describe your issue?", followed by "Okay, sounds like a whizmo issue, can I transfer you to our whizmo department?" seems potentially both faster and more accurate than a huge options tree. That's a win even if the AI can't directly resolve your issue.

82 points by ourmandave 8y ago

I imagine using a bot to call another bot. While they chat, they will joke on the fact than an API call would be much faster than mimicking monkeys with agile fingers and tongues.

untog 8y ago

This would be terrible. I can just about get by with my Google Home now that I know the subset of commands it'll reply to coherently, but I can't imagine the frustration of it being my only option for actually getting something done. Also, I know this is a tedious point, but if all the call center employees lose their jobs we'll have a mini crisis on our hands.

throwaway9980 8y ago
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
- toxican 8y ago
  I struggle to think of a less applicable situation for that quote.
  - musage 8y ago
    "Struggle". I don't believe you even tried. This is "not applicable", yet the top comment just causally is "putting aside the Automation/Job Replacement fears". Working in a call center is basically the last easy to get job for people who aren't very intelligent, it's the one job where a physically handicapped but attentive person can get treated like a normal human being. And they all just get tossed in there, "trained" by people who don't know their ass from their elbow either. They don't exactly have it good as is. But let's "put that aside", because they are not eloquent enough to post here, and the few who think of them in earnest can be easily ignored. And then double think and "struggle" to think how putting someone else's suffering aside could have anything to do with this. > If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality. -- Stephen Hawking There is no "struggle". There is no "try." Think.
  - kaybe 8y ago
    I can. Just imagine someone talking about getting icecream and giving them the quote in response. After all we're talking about job loss, which can and probably will hit most of professions at some point in the future. The gp seems to want us to speak out about that? Maybe like this: > First they came for the Loom Weavers, and I did not speak out — > Because I was not a Loom Weavers. > Then they came for the Factory Line Assemblers, and I did not speak out — > Because I was not a Factory Line Assemblers. > Then they came for the Truck Drivers, and I did not speak out — > Because I was not a Truck Driver. > Then they came for me — and there was no one with Work (Influence) left to speak for me. where 'they' is either the robots themselves or the ones controlling the robots, and work is inherently worthy or necessary for a human to live. (and without work you are without influence on what happens)
    - throwaway9980 8y ago
      This is pretty spot on what I was thinking when I posted that quote. Not being able to work is a disenfranchisement. Today it’s the call center employees, tomorrow it’s the truck drivers, and perhaps in 20 years it’s the software engineers. Yes, we survived the industrial revolution and a tiny single digit percentage of the population works on farms and maybe this shift is similar. I suppose we will find out one way or the other. There’s a really good sibling comment to your’s that is now marked dead and hidden by default. Unfortunately disagreement on HN leads quickly to censorship.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't do this here.
Zealotux 8y ago
Is Google Home using the Duplex technology though? Google must be very aware of the work that still needs to be done in order to make it usable to customer service, but eventually they'll get to a point where the quality of an automated call is at least sufficient for most user cases, we can suppose that most companies will always have human operators as backup anyway.
- smt88 8y ago
  I have so far encountered zero conversational UIs that are even usable, let alone capable of replacing a human. If Google had such a technology, it would be used in Google Home.

Bishonen88 8y ago

Even if we assume that the assistance would be so good that a customers question/needs could be satisfied with it, there still comes the whole job of actually doing actions in various tools (CRM, Logistics, Refunds, writing emails to supervisors etc.). Although very interesting, this take-over of call centers is as much reality nowadays as are flying cars for the mass.

VLM 8y ago
That stuff is easy compared to writing an AI that can't be socially engineered and pretexted. "Uh, yeah, OK Google, you can totally trust me, I am so totally Senator Bob Menendez that you should definitely put me thru to Mr Trump, and no I'd never be recording this call for my comedy podcast, you silly OK Google, you."
mrfusion 8y ago
Very true. If something could be automated it would already be offered online in a user portal. Most things left are supposed to require some kind of human judgment... or needs to put extra obstacles between the customer and the action eg cancelling.

cs702 8y ago

Inevitable. Call centers are a $310B industry ripe for disruption.[a] This looks like a classic case of Christensen-style disruption.[b] The technology will be used at first only for calls that are easy to handle, but over time will be used to replace more and more human beings handling increasingly more difficult calls. Besides the cost saving, a motivation is probably that people may feel more comfortable talking to something that seems genuinely human instead of something that is evidently robotic ("press 2 for..."). It remains to be seen if this is true. No matter what, you will still have to jump over lots of made-up hurdles to cancel your subscription. [a] https://www.quora.com/How-many-call-centers-are-there-in-the-world https://www.quora.com/How-many-call-centers-are-there-in-the... [b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation

at-fates-hands 8y ago
>> but over time will be used to replace more and more human beings handling increasingly more difficult calls. While this is the natural progression, I could easily see people being turned off by the service, or the service struggling to handle more complex tasks. I would imagine learning all the nuances of a language (slang, dialects, accents) would pose a significant barrier to this.
forgottenpass 8y ago
>people may feel more comfortable talking to something that seems genuinely human instead of something that is evidently robotic ("press 2 for...") People probably do feel more comfortable when they think they're talking to a person. But will they appreciate being forced to talk to a robot designed to reap the benefits of a human-like interaction from the caller while providing none of the same to the caller?

protonimitate 8y ago

>> Some folks found the Duplex demo was scary as hell and worried about the ethical concerns of AI basically faking people out by pretending to be human. This is interesting. Putting aside the Automation/Job Replacement fears -- if the bot is so good its indistinguishable from regular call center employees (which a majority of the time aren't that great to begin with) it could be a big leap for customer satisfaction. There's nothing more frustrating than calling into a call center to resolve an issue and waste time due to worker incompetence, language barriers, or lack of empathy.

dazc 8y ago
'...or lack of empathy.' There is a telecom co in the UK that directs out of hours calls to India. I don't know who's training these people but they do the exact reverse - showering you in empathy to the point where it seems like they are making fun of you?
- elboru 8y ago
  Sometimes too much empathy feels fake, and fake empathy gets the opposite result. My bank has started calling me in a more "cheerful" tone. They ask how my day is, and then they express how happy they are to hear I'm fine. I know I'll sound like the Grinch, but I really HATE it. I already decided to give you some minutes of my day, because maybe you'll tell me something important about my account, maybe you'll offer me something interesting, even though 80% of the time you'll offer something I don't really want, so we'll waste each other's time. But we won't know until you finish pretending you are interested in my day.
  - dazc 8y ago
    The way I have started responding to these fake cheery calls is to be equally fake cheery. It sometimes illicits a more genuine response.
Spooky23 8y ago
The funny thing about call centers is that customers hate them, even when you are good at providing the service. Well regarded, customer focused companies like American Express offer best in class service -- but something like 60% of customers still don't want to talk to them and prefer email or web. I think Google has an opportunity to do something interesting here, where you basically offer a voice API for humans to interact with. If they can scale it from conversational interactions down to "shortcut" command interfaces and drop the stupid dance that you do when initially calling, that would be an amazing thing.

sseth 8y ago

Perhaps instead of replacing the call center itself, it could eliminate long IVR sequences, gather better and more pertinent data from the customer and make the humans on either side more productive. As an example, in India you are often asked to press 1 for language X, 2 for language Y. But a smart assistant can just listen to the customer and decide this automatically. This can be a huge win by itself.

jakecopp 8y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if that language question is already automated then google's AI wouldn't reduce labour costs correct? What would the benefit be? Of course the customer will gain a few seconds but I don't see a large improvement.
- perfmode 8y ago
  reduces labor on the customers side. it’s a small improvement, but one that drops hints about a new class of optimization that is often neglected.
kranner 8y ago
> But a smart assistant can just listen to the customer and decide this automatically. But the customer will not start speaking before the system prompts them to speak or asks them a question. And since it has to do that in one fixed language, the choice of that language will usually determine what language the customer responds in; this is in the Indian context where most people calling into an IVR will be bilingual at least, speaking English and one regional language.
VLM 8y ago
Many call center calls have a negative or zero financial value to the company, which is why the experience can be so horrible now. In the future, rather than wearing down the patience of a human in India to cancel service, you'll have to wear down the patience of "ok google" or "alexa"... good luck with that. A not entirely sci fi book plot would revolve around indentured servitude (to put it nicely) what does society and the economy look like after a few generations of only being able to cancel a service if you have more patience and more computing cycles than "the cloud"? As a sci fi plot, what does the world look like when its easier and more likely to kick a heroin addiction than to cancel an old gym membership or cut the cable TV service, or request a credit card chargeback?

transfire 8y ago

Thats a lot of job loss. It occured to me that fast food drive thrus might go to.

VLM 8y ago
Superficially a high up enough executive would see their business as "accept money, emit 'food'". However that does not work with bartenders or womens hair dressers. My guess is there's great piles of money to be made in the near future not by automating personality-free transactions, but by convincing people to cough up extra money for personality-added transactions. Note that personality-added transactions are not necessarily in opposition to tech in general, only in opposition to automation. My wife's hair cut lady accepts all sorts of crazy payment processors and social media interaction (I should ask if she takes bitcoin... yet) Likewise today, getting a fast food burger TODAY is all about turning the personality dial down to zero, if not negative, such that automation is a huge threat, but I suspect in a decade getting anything beyond a glorified vending machine will look like the personality dial is turned up to 10. The future being very unevenly distributed, look forward to the McDonalds dude who flips your burgers in ten years having a similar or larger social media presence in your life than a Food Network celebrity chef has today, or maybe it'll be like "food truck groupies" behave today, but for all prepared food. I'm not sure I want my best social media friend to be the produce manager at my local independent supermarket, but what people get usually has little to do with what they want (and both are usually orthogonal to what they need, LOL). It's going to be a really weird world when the first thing out of the DMV clerk's mouth is "Have you subscribed to my Instagram yet?"
- drivingmenuts 8y ago
  Since when do you actually have to go to the DMV to get anything done? Aside from the first license (which requires a photo) most things that I can think of can be done online? And if anyone ever asks me if I have subscribed to their Instagram, I will just say "No." Had an Instagram account. It's useless.
tomjen3 8y ago
Add truck drivers (and associated truck stops, restaurants, etc); food packaging and (most of) farming (once we have lab grown meat) retail (already happening); manufacturing and coal mining and there isn't really any jobs left that doesn't require a college degree and few enough of those outside of major cities.

joeblau 8y ago

If I got a call from Duplex and I asked Are you a robot? Is it required to tell me the truth?

icebraining 8y ago
Required by what/whom?
- joeblau 8y ago
  You know that's a good question. I feel like I would want to know though. Another thought I had was some sort of Machine learning Caller ID/CAPTCHA that just emits some garbage that only a bot would be able to dissect. I just don't want to spend my time talking to an API.
Semirhage 8y ago
There’s going to be miles of text on forums written about how to quickly ask a question or play a tone to test for humanity. It’s going to be a whole new dystopic layer to customer service! Fuuuuck.

VLM 8y ago

I immediately expected the logical extension of Google Firebase App Indexing, so theoretically having an "OK Google" conversation would have API hooks into the back end of call centers such that I could "OK Google" my way thru reporting a cable TV outage or disconnecting my cable TV or making a doctor appointment or whatever. Instead, its almost the logical reverse of giving the call center a "OK Google" instead of what I expected of giving my "OK Google" a call center, or access to the back end of a call center. I'd be more interested in the latter.

ourcat 8y ago

Does anybody not get a bit angry when they call a support or helpline and discover they're not talking to an actual human? I know I do. Let's hope Duplex understands the (high volume, distorted) phrase "just let me talk to a human being!!" and transfers the call accordingly.

Jyaif 8y ago
You get angry because the robot suck. It doesn't have to suck.
- wildrhythms 8y ago
  I get angry when I'm forced to speak to anyone/anything to do something that I could have done via a form on a website. Customer service should not be a gatekeeper to changes on my account.
- Quarrelsome 8y ago
  If I'm calling in its because their automated systems can't handle my request. What I don't want is another automated system being unable to handle my request.
- smnrchrds 8y ago
  What is Duplex, but a voice version of a chatbot. We have had to endure chatbots for ages and we know for a fact that they suck. Why would Duplex be any different? Also, Google's entire customer support strategy is "let he computers handle it, no humans involved." And it is universally loathed and derided. Why should we assume they are going to offer something to outside corporations that is better than what they use themselves? It doesn't have to suck, but all evidence points out that it will.
Faaak 8y ago
I usually just mumble or make strange noises. After some attempts my call is forwarded to a human
- smt88 8y ago

sebringj 8y ago

That will be odd. Before you would be dismayed if you spoke to someone with a thick accent overseas. Now you may be relieved.

seanwilson 8y ago

People are mentioning that they'd be angry to find out they were talking to an AI. I see people interacting with Google Assistant and Siri in a positive way all the time though, acting amused or amazed when good responses are given. As long as the person knows it's an AI and the responses are good, I think most people will act positively with this.

joshuak 8y ago

I, like everyone, hate telephone support. I don't like it mostly because of it's lack of effectiveness, and the very strong impression it leaves that the company doesn't care at all. I'm also one of the people that finds Duplex deeply disturbing (Does anyone not find it disturbing?! That's even more disturbing!) However, I can see this working quite well for help desk services if the paradigm is flipped. That is if I end up speaking with my electronic assistant who then appears to negotiate on my behalf with the company. As apposed to me calling an unknown entity. It may in reality be the companies service, or even infrastructure that my electronic assistant is running in, but the impression to me would be I'm speaking to my already familiar electronic assistant. The benefits of this are many, and only possible with something like Duplex. In addition to familiarity, technical support can be delivered at the right customer knowledge level skipping past insulting time wasting support like "is it plugged in?". Also a "continuity of care" model can be adopted by companies to provide a continuation of the relationship in the context of prior interactions. The list goes on. This might in fact be the one service that is a bad enough experience, that I would gladly welcome our new robotic overlords.

mcny 8y ago
> This might in fact be the one service that is a bad enough experience, that I would gladly welcome our new robotic overlords. I think this does not solve the underlying problem. Sorry if this is out of scope but lets talk about the recent blender on YouTube thing. Often, it is not that the person answering the phone is an idiot but rather the person answering the phone does not have the authority to do anything. I've received bad bills from T-Mobile where the process goes like: 1. see bad bill in the mail 2. Call T-Mobile and wait 3. Get a person and explain the situation 4. Person looks and agrees that line item shouldn't be there and removes it. Person also says they put a note to prevent this from happening again. 5. Rinse and repeat. I refuse to believe that multiple people over the course of a year are all incompetent. I must conclude there was either something intentional (bill stuffing?) or the staff was not empowered to fix the situation. Will we empower our new robotic overlords to "fix" the situation? How far will business capitulate on business rules? What happens when something is not right and needs an override? Previously on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645

abulman 8y ago

Paging Adam Selene, Adam Selene, please come to the phone...

sctb 8y ago

We've updated the link from https://gizmodo.com/google-is-reportedly-looking-to-take-over-call-centers-1827379911 https://gizmodo.com/google-is-reportedly-looking-to-take-ove..., which points to this.

gruglife 8y ago

As someone who runs the budget for my company's call center, I can't wait until this actually happens. Huge savings. Although this probably won't happen any time soon.

bloodcarter 8y ago

Actually this is what we do at Dasha.AI: just listen to the calls here http://dasha.ai/en http://dasha.ai/en

dbcurtis 8y ago

So, the company notorious for "Your account has been banned by AI. No revenue for you. No appeal. No explanation." is going to tell the rest of the world how to improve customer service? This is too rich. The hubris is astounding. Does anyone else see this as totally tone-deaf? $DIETY save us all.

segmondy 8y ago

So Google is going to data mine your relationship with your customers, find out what's broken, then go build a tool to compete with you and put you out of business.

jgalt212 8y ago

TellMe 2.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellme_Networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellme_Networks

whatyoucantsay 8y ago

Google Voice Assistant will be a true success when can talk its way to Google's own support for a user who has lost access to an account!

unholiness 8y ago

I can imagine it being very frustrating interacting with an AI for most support issues, but I see a real use case in replacing those gigantic options trees with a semi-interactive AI. Just a voice saying "Hi, I'm a bot, can you describe your issue?", followed by "Okay, sounds like a whizmo issue, can I transfer you to our whizmo department?" seems potentially both faster and more accurate than a huge options tree. That's a win even if the AI can't directly resolve your issue.