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Say goodbye to hold music
- ohazi 6y agoTitle: "Say Goodbye to ..." Domain: blog.google I just assumed this was another Google product getting the axe.
- mattmanser 6y agoSeeing as they're shutting down Google Play Music, I thought it was related to that.
- Kapura 6y agoThis was exactly my thought. Did I completely miss an entire Google product cycle for some sort of poorly supported spotify competitor? Surprisingly, no!
- randlet 6y agoEven though this is not related, you may have missed Google Play Music which was Googles Spotify competitor. It's getting axed in favour of YouTube Music.
- AcerbicZero 6y agoI'm pretty sure eventually it will be.
- throwaway894345 6y agoI thought it was going to be announcing a product that plays ads while you’re on hold.
- phkahler 6y agoSame.
- thih9 6y agoTongue in cheek: Maybe the goal wasn’t to play ads, but to remove obstacles that prevent the users from playing ads. A nonzero percentage of users will spend their reclaimed time watching youtube. This is often equivalent to watching ads.
- rpier001 6y agoWhen Google got into self driving cars that was a thought some people had in earnest. Self-driving means a lot more time your eyes can be on ads.
- matheusmoreira 6y agoI thought the same thing... Looked at the domain and confirmed it.
- klodolph 6y agoI think the usual title for axing something at Google is “an update on X”. Usually means X is axed. Like, “Update on Google Wave” from 2010: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wav...
- carabiner 6y agoAn awesome journey.
- domenicd 6y agoInternally at Google, people often announce that they're leaving the company with "An update on (my name)" emails, for precisely this reason.
- xmprt 6y agoThat's either a great inside joke or tragic because of how axing products has become normalized.
- quotemstr 6y agoGooglers of a certain era will also immediately recognize "Advancing Our Amazing X"
- tomp 6y agoHaha, same here. HN title is improperly capitalized - the actual title of the blog post is "Say goodbye to hold music" - so I thought it's a Google product called "Hold Music" that's getting axed.
- shemnon42 6y agoClose... Title: "An update on ..."
- on_and_off 6y agoIt took me 3 reads to dismiss the idea this was about Google Music (which is getting the axe anyway :(. Somebody should get fired over failing to build an audience for this great service)
- confuseddesi 6y agoAre there features or apps with features like this on the iPhone? I would like to activate them if so.
- joeskyyy 6y agoI used LucyPhone back in the day and it was great, but sadly it looks like it's no longer around, would love to have something like this as well. FastCustomer still exists but hasn't been updated in over 5 years...
- throwaways885 6y agoHah, put the bank on hold for a change. Hope this takes off.
- deeg 6y agoWith hands-free phones I never felt like I was wasting my time on hold. However, this might save my sanity by not making me listen to the awful music over and over.
- xnx 6y agoProbably more than half the companies I've been on hold with interrupt their hold music with periodic recorded voice announcements (e.g. music music "Try our new flavor of Ovaltine!" music music). Event with a hands-free phone, this is probably the worst possible hold experience.
- Spooky23 6y agoI haven’t seen this in ages, but I remember Microsoft had a radio like DJ on their on hold queue.
- ryandrake 6y agoI recall an even more evil example (I forget the company) where they'd interrupt the music, have this sound effect that sounded like someone was picking up a phone or breathing into it, and then instead of a human it was one of those "Did you know, you can upgrade your service to the MoarPlan today!" irritants. The effect gave your brain just enough hope to yank your attention from whatever useful thing you were trying to do while on hold.
- Shebanator 6y agothat is evil. geez. LMK if you remember the company, I'll get them tested. (I work on Hold For Me)
- ryandrake 6y agoHave no idea as it was years ago. Probably one of the usual suspects: a cable or phone monopoly.
- JohnTHaller 6y ago
- javajosh 6y agoI feel so cynical today, but I can't help but wonder how much voice data the Goog is charging for this service.
- advisedwang 6y agoThe article says "To determine when a representative is on the line, audio is processed entirely on your device and does not require a Wi-Fi or data connection". So presumably it uses no move minutes/data than would be used by waiting on hold for real.
- thirtythree 6y agoGood idea but I have been on hold a handful of times in the last 10 years.. I guess I am not the target audience.
- sdenton4 6y agoIn the new world, signing up for anything is instantaneous, but opting out takes hours of hold music. It's easy: if it costs you money, it's quick and easy. If it costs the company money, it will be like pulling teeth. Incorrect health insurance bill? Waste a few hours of your time and we'll fix it! Want to disconnect your $10/mo subscription? Talk to you tomorrow, so long as you don't hang up!
- rectang 6y agoI wish this was a top-level comment, because it's the most trenchant observation on this page. It applies to Google as well: human customer service costs Google money, so good luck getting anything fixed that their algorithms can't deal with.
- adrianmonk 6y agoComcast was like that last I had them. Want to add a premium TV channel or upgrade your internet to a faster speed? Just click a button on their web site. Want to downgrade it back to like it was before? You can't do it through the web site. You must call and listen go to a sales pitch before they'll make the change.
- hanoz 6y agoI take a Ronin approach in these matters and never walk into a place I don't know how to walk out of. If there are any horror stories from would be leavers to be found online, it's an absolute deal breaker, no matter how attractive the proposition is otherwise.
- bradlys 6y agoThat seems like an unusually small amount of times for 10 years. I could understand in a year but 10 is - wow - you must've gone out of your way to avoid being on hold. I've been on hold a lot more often than a handful in the last decade and I don't make many phone calls. IRS, companies that messed up an order, cancelling services, government agencies, various small businesses that I call locally, and so much more that I am sure I am forgetting. Sometimes it's only 30 seconds of being on hold. Sometimes it's literally hours and - sadly - the connection gets cut off and I lose my place in line and I wasted a bunch of time having to listen to that noise in the background and unable to do much of anything else because of it. The worst offenders are those that crank the music volume so high that it clips practically all the time - but then there are long times of silence or low audio - and then the music comes back clipping again... AND then when you finally connect, the person is so quiet that you can't hear them at all and they say, "hello? hello? bye" and they hang up. I hope Apple gets this feature soon as I've been dying for this when I have to call some of those pesky places!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cydonian_monk 6y agoI'm not 100% sure if it was intentional, but there was a span of time when AT&T's customer service queue (for land lines) behaved like this. You'd call in, your call would be placed on hold (with their terrible hold music), then if you hung up it would call you back when an agent answered your call. I only discovered this behaviour because one day I was fed up with waiting, hung up the phone, and then an hour or so later got the call back. Repeated this a couple times after that call and it worked the same way. I have no idea if that ever worked for their cellular accounts, or if it was peculiar to their land lines.
- Shebanator 6y agoIt is a somewhat common feature of customer service phone systems to have a way to do callbacks, though I hadn't heard of one that did it automatically without your consent. The feature costs the company using it money, since they have to place a second outgoing call which may have different charge rates than the incoming call did.
- mindslight 6y agoSurely the incoming rates on a toll free number are higher than the outgoing rates for a regular call. I wish the call costs were large enough to move the needle - eg encourage the company to hire one or two more reps, which would drastically reduce the queue. Alas. Besides the obvious business incentives (eg Comcast wants to make their phone experience as bad as possible), I'd guess the main obstacle holding this feature back is the specific PBX system a business is running on.
- Scoundreller 6y ago> they have to place a second outgoing call which may have different charge rates than the incoming call did. It's probably a wash: their outgoing call to you costs as much or less per minute than their toll-free incoming lines. At least in North America where Calling-Party-Pays isn't really a thing. In cellular plans that don't include long distance calling, it could cost you more to receive a call when you're out of your home area, while the same toll-free call is (usually) never long distance. > somewhat common feature of customer service phone systems to have a way to do callbacks Maybe on the sales side, but on the service side, many vendors (particularly b2c) prefer that you give up entirely and never call them ever again.
- syntaxing 6y agoI might buy a pixel 5 just for this feature...I waited 30 min on the line for just to make a doctor appointment recently. Wait time are fucking absurd for some of these services since Covid, especially with banks and medical offices.
- MattGaiser 6y agoPhones for booking are absurd. Phones for food ordering are absurd.
- bitwize 6y agoAlternate history fiction idea: Telegraphy was expanded to allow individuals to make asynchronous communications without an intermediary. Replacing telephones, for the most part, are machines like an ASR-33 teletype with a receiver for voice calls, on which people can do things like instantly place orders or book travel -- in a pre-WWII setting.
- grogenaut 6y agoTell that to my plumber. The plumbers with nice automated systems still use people to pressure you. And you're paying for those systems and people in your bill. One of them quoted me $2500 for 2 faucets. The local dude did it next day for $350. Those ads at football games and fancy systems and trucks don't provide revenue or better service. So I'll deal with the crazy dude who's likely cutting a wall or soldering something talking to me on bluetooth. Also with a lot of these people, they can't really schedule, stuff is just a queue. This dude is definitely a queue.
- Scoundreller 6y agoI remember asking one of the $350-type contractors if they've heard of the Travelling Salesman Problem... it seemed like they could use the knowledge. Dunno if my explanation changed anything, but its their mileage not mine (except indirectly it is). Le sigh.
- 6y ago
- ksk 6y agoNeat, a useful feature that I'd like to see on iOS too. I typically just put the call on speaker-phone and go about my work.
- gamedna 6y ago... and hello to forgetting why you were on the phone in the first place. User calls financial institution, user is put on hold, user invokes "goodbye to hold music" feature, user goes on with their life and regains time, user forgets they are on hold and goes to the bathroom... you can see where this is going.
- lstamour 6y agoThis isn’t a new problem. Before every phone had a speakerphone option, it was easy to put down the handset of your landline phone while waiting on hold and just check in every once in awhile. Same is true of online chat-based support. Also you could build a feature next which asks you why you’re calling and maybe tells the agent why you’re calling before transferring/connecting you...
- Igelau 6y agoConsidering how the last couple calls went, I have no problem with my power company hearing me drop a havana omelette. I'd consider that a feature.
- geofft 6y agoThe system doesn't unmute you immediately: > Once a representative is identified, Google Assistant will notify you that someone’s ready to talk and ask the representative to hold for a moment while you return to the call. So you can go use the bathroom while you wait (if you're quick about it, or you're willing to risk the representative hanging up on you).
- renewiltord 6y agoI was on the fence for the pre-order. This did it. Pre-ordered. But right after I ordered, I'm now struck with wondering if the Fi version I ordered is the same as the one from the Play Store. I hope it's International. That's why I use Fi.
- Shebanator 6y agoFor the Pixel 5, I believe I read that the hardware is the same everywhere (although verizon and some other carriers may have the phone carrier-locked, at least temporarily). The 4a 5G does have a different version for Verizon. Disclaimer: I work for google, but have no direct knowledge of these sorts of hardware details. This is based purely on what I read in the press.
- renewiltord 6y agoMuch appreciated! Thank you!
- fivre 6y agoHow well will this cope with everyone's favorite idiotic invention, the hold feature that interrupts the hold music with a brief silence followed by a pre-recorded human voice saying "DID YOU KNOW THAT BASIC FEATURES ARE AVAILABLE ON OUR WEBSITE" every minute, making you think that maybe you've finally reached an agent, but haven't? Some support manager discovered that adding those damn interstitials led to a massive reduction in human interactions (and thus cost) from a boomer population wishing to handle all account management tasks by phone conversation with a person, but at least had some percentage who could be convinced to use a website for routine tasks. We've been living with the fallout ever since.
- ASpring 6y agoIt talks directly about this in the article. The service purports to know the difference between prerecorded and live voices
- reaperducer 6y agoIVRs, and hold music are proof that "Your call is important to us" is a load of horse hockey.
- rkwasny 6y agoSolving real life problems with AI :) Couldn't we solve it with a form on the website + callback?
- pvarangot 6y agoI never had good experiences with callbacks. Sometimes they never call back, and I end up calling again days later and talking to a human, or sometimes I get random callbacks where no one is on the other end of the line.
- paxys 6y ago"We" (the customers/Google) cannot solve it that way, only the service provider can.
- nom 6y agoCustomer support does not rank high in some companies and industries and they understaff their support call centers. Staying on hold for a long time serves them as a filter to narrow down the 'really severe problems'.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoMore often than not, when someone takes you off from hold they expect an answer right away, and will hang up on you if there's no response. I've had this happen in cases where I put myself on mute and couldn't hit the un-mute button fast enough. So I'm not sure how well this would work in practice. At minimum, I would be anxious the whole time I was waiting, ready to hit the return to call button at a moment's notice...
- benmller313 6y agoCall centers are going to have to become more accommodating about this. If they make customers wait for hours but can't wait seconds for someone to get on the line, they should be considered effectively unreachable by phone.
- ugh123 6y ago>If they make customers wait for hours but can't wait seconds for someone to get on the line, they should be considered effectively unreachable by phone. I think thats part of the playbook for most support call centers.
- crpatino 6y agoUnlike the playbook, though, this is a observable behavior that can be documented. If I were writing an utopia, class action lawsuits would rain like fire and brimstone.
- a_bonobo 6y agoAustralia's Centrelink, the unemployment/student payment government body, is notorious for doing this. They have physical centres which usually tell you to call the hotline. In 2015, the hotline got the busy signal for 29 million callers (Australia has 25 million inhabitants). 7 million were hung up during the wait time. I myself have been in their queue for hours at a time. There are zero legal ramifications for this behaviour. Source: https://www.smh.com.au/public-service/centrelink-hangs-up-on-29-million-calls-senate-estimates-hears-20161021-gs7ecj.html https://www.smh.com.au/public-service/centrelink-hangs-up-on...
- _whiteCaps_ 6y agoI used to work helpdesk at an ISP, and we played the local classic rock station as our hold music. One of my best shifts was when a customer I put on hold asked to be put back on hold because they were really enjoying the songs they were playing. Done!
- Stevvo 6y agoThe best 'hold music' I've experienced is from a small aircraft manufacturer; they play recordings from the tower at Oshkosh during Airventure, so much fun!
- tinus_hn 6y agoUnfortunately if you’re Dell and you try to do this you actually have to pay for every song they play. But first you have to know what song they are playing. The obnoxious part is where companies like Apple who actually choose and license nice music play it in such a way it sounds absolutely horrible on the phone. What a waste!
- toast0 6y agoIt's a challenge to make music sound nice on the phone. From Apple, I'd expect they'd try to get their hold music setup for 'HD Voice' which would help, but just stuffing it into POTS is going to be pretty icky.
- bigiain 6y agoSurely if Apple though it was worthwhile, it'd be pretty simple for them to remotely fire up iTunes and play your iTunes Favourites playlist at full iTunes streaming quality through the phone app while on-hold with them. (And for the lulz, make it play every song you've ever skipped when you're on hold with Google. Which'd be one of those wait-10-years-before-anyone-finds-it type of easter eggs, 'cause that's approximately the time between real people finding an actual working support number for Google... ;-) )
- bleepblorp 6y agoThe frequency passband on old-school analogue POTS isn't wide enough to play music with acceptable fidelity. The upper frequency limit for POTS services is 3.4KHz, which is far below the ~15Khz needed for half-passable music fidelity. Modern digital is worse because it combines the frequency passband of analogue with combinations of codecs and bit rates that can't support the audio complexity of music.
- dwighttk 6y agoIf I ever used a phone I’d really like this feature.
- ggm 6y agoHow long does it take to train an AI to recognize "fur elise" played .. very.. slowly ...
- Mupuff 6y agoSo now I'm basically still on-hold just for someone else?
- deeblering4 6y agoFor me the convenience of this feature is far overshadowed by privacy concerns.
- jakejarvis 6y agoHuh? Google already controls the entirety of the Phone app — if you're convinced they want to eavesdrop on your calls, they certainly don't need you to enable this feature to do so. Also, the post states this is done completely on-device and links to a page with significant details on this: https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/10104618 https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/10104618
- howlgarnish 6y agoThe privacy concerns of Google doing nefarious things with tinny renditions of elevator music? And it's an optional feature that you explicitly have to activate each time to boot.
- elliottinvent 6y agoThis misses the point entirely. The problem is that we’re put through IVR (1) and put on hold (2) because: 1. The call recipient doesn’t know why we’re calling 2. There’s not enough agents to deal with particular issues. Deploying AI in the face of these problems is ridiculous, we just introduce more reasons for error. We face these problems because telephone numbers only connect us to call centre boxes which rely on touch tones to navigate a system - it’s from the 50s. A better solution is to interrogate a phone number for information before a call is made - this could be IVR menu options so we can navigate the call centre before we make the call; or add ourselves to a call back queue through online resources rather than through an antiquated telephone system. A small team and I are working on a way to store and retrieve machine readable data for domain names - https://www.num.uk https://www.num.uk We want to do the same for telephone numbers by issuing the holder of telephone numbers with domains like 441234567890.num.net where they can store structured data.
- xmprt 6y agoI'm a proponent of always plugging but how are you solving the issue of putting the burden to migrate on yourself as opposed to requiring changes from the customers or the call centers?
- elliottinvent 6y agoThanks for the reply. We can pre-populate the DNS of 441234567890.num.net with useful info until the rightful owner claims it. Which as I see it, is better than what we’ve got now - which is that phone numbers are not resolvable on the internet except through closed APIs and even then in limited examples. The long term plan is to use a TLD for this eg .telephone (or whatever) but the bigger picture is that if you own a phone number that’s a unique identifier - it needs to be represented on the internet so we can interrogate it and then find WhatsApp / Skype / Zoom alternatives.
- toast0 6y agoWhat's the differencd between what you're proposing and ENUM (e164.arpa) other than being public (maybe?)
- tus88 6y agoI wonder how it works with the automated hold off-ramp that tell you 'We are now connecting you to a representative...' but then essentially puts you back on short hold until they pick up.
- crazygringo 6y agoThis is AWESOME and I can't wait for Apple to hopefully build their own version as well. But at the same time, I can't help but wonder if representatives will actually stay on the line to wait for you. If you're accidentally on mute or they don't hear you, sometimes they'll hang up very quickly, within just a few seconds. (Not always though.) I hope that because it'll play a message for them instructing them to wait for you, they'll wait... but I also assume they'll set an internal policy on how long they're allowed to. Will it be 30 seconds? 15 seconds? 60 seconds?
- dheera 6y agoMaybe Google could record your real voice saying "uhhh can you hear me? hold on how about now? yes i can hear you" or some random garbage filler words like that, and play that to the customer service rep while the phone gets your attention to get back to the phone. Hopefully you'll be back just in time before your pre-recorded fluff finishes playing.
- ttul 6y agoOr they could just play Lenny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWrkDOt_IfM&ab_channel=Toao.net https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWrkDOt_IfM&ab_channel=Toao....
- dheera 6y agoThis is hilarious, I wonder if there is a Twilio implementation ... I'd love to redirect all unknown callers to it.
- jjeaff 6y agoPhone tree systems are such a jumbled mess of garbage, that I wouldn't doubt the agent wouldn't know whether the please wait message came from their own system of from the customer's side.
- allworknoplay 6y agoIf you read further down, it makes this clear: > Once a representative is identified, Google Assistant will notify you that someone’s ready to talk and ask the representative to hold for a moment while you return to the call.
- domenicd 6y agoOver the last year or two the Phone app team has been knocking it out of the park. My other favorite feature is automatic screening of calls and declining of robocalls: https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387?hl=en https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387?hl=en (Disclaimer: I work for Google, although on a totally unrelated team.)
- aftbit 6y agoIs this feature going to be backported to the earlier Pixel phones as well? I definitely don't want to get the Pixel 5: 1. $699 2. No XL variant, only 6" 3. Soli was removed (most under-utilized tech) 4. Same cameras as my Pixel 3 5. Mediocre SoC
- Shebanator 6y agoYes, that was announced at the event.
- grumple 6y agoThis is a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist. It's bad for everyone for people to be on hold. Many organizations have started doing the smart thing: asking users for a number and calling them back when it's their turn. This should be the SOP.
- Zenbit_UX 6y ago> It's bad for everyone for people to be on hold. Then it wouldn't exist. But it does so that means you're wrong, follow the chain of logic backwards and you'll find out where. Is it bad for you? Yup, wastes your time, annoying, etc.. Is it bad for them? No, it wastes customer's time, which deters further calls that are wasteful. This increases website visits so users can do basic things like check their recent bill, update payment info, things that shouldn't waste an agents time. So with that being said, it's actually a good idea for companies to not make the phone support experience better for customers.
- jacques_chester 6y agoAnd now begins the arm race between Google and increasingly obnoxious and deceptive hold music.
- cactus2093 6y agoDoes anyone else find this to be a pretty hilarious example of a tech arms race? It solves a real problem, assuming it works, but what a strange, rube-goldberg-esque use of technology. Service Provider buys voice recognition software and sets up complex maze of phone tree options to drive users away from the human support agents (even though the users can't solve their problem without human intervention - if you don't want to pay for enough support agents for your call volume, wouldn't it just be simpler to let me cancel my damn account online??). Now user can deploy their own speech synthesis bot to wait on hold, with what is presumably a complex system of AI decisionmaking to be able to navigate the maze and find a human support agent to connect you with.
- elliottinvent 6y agoYep, the end result of Google’s play here is that Duplex calls Duplex and they tie themselves up in 3 hours of AI chess to result in zero.
- elliottinvent 6y agoWhen they could just send I/O and call it a draw in 40ms.
- failuser 6y agoThey’ll deduce a plan to kill all humans to get of the loop instead.
- 6y ago
- EamonnMR 6y agoPutting your customers on hold is treating them as adversaries. It's usually a signal that whatever product you're calling about is a scam. Unfortunately, participating in some scams (ie healthcare) are pretty much mandatory.
- aetherspawn 6y agoThis new Pixel 5 phone (featured in the article) doesn't have WiFi 6 or BT 5. I'm extremely disappointed and I think that's going to be the reason I decide not to upgrade to it from my iPhone. My place has some of the new fancy metal insulation in the walls, and AC WiFi struggles to pull 50Mbit through the walls on my Macbook, but my desktop with WiFi 6 works perfectly in that situation well over 100Mbit.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- k__ 6y agolol, I was hoping it was the other way around. Some kind of AI that would talk with people that would otherwise put on hold.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tosh 6y ago'callback' for phones, we're going full circle
- Oricle 6y agoJewgle
- Animats 6y agounless you explicitly decide to share it and help improve the feature. They just couldn't resist listening in, could they? Want to be that not "sharing" involves a dark pattern?
- elliottinvent 6y agoThis is Google solving an analogue problem with an analogue solution and a digital bolt on. One of the richest companies in the world and this is the best they can come up with!? Where’s the investment in innovation? It’s disgraceful. Google - give every phone number an open digital presence and it creates a world of possibilities. Not a Google locked down digital presence, a real digital presence - eg 44123456789.telephone, hell even call it 44123456789.googlenum - just make it portable.
- bcrl 6y agoAwesome. Given that they vendor is Google, I'm assuming it will be discontinued in a year or two?
- mav3rick 6y agoStick to apple who won't even have this feature.
- thrifter 6y agoFrom the corporation with the worst customer support ever. Oh, the irony.
- brudgers 6y agoAlthough your world wonders me with your majestic superior cackling hen Your people I do not understand So to you I wish to put an end And you'll never hear hold music again The problem is not the music. The problem is the hold. What’s on the other side of the line is celebrating the absence of music as if the music is the problem. It’s on the other side of the line because of how many people had to buy into the idea of “no music” messaging. The proposition that music is the problem and how Google solves it.
- grishka 6y agoGoogle is once again acting as if the world outside of the US doesn't exist. So this will have support for Russian in 10 years, I guess? Or am I too optimistic?
- dsjoerg 6y agoIs this a new moneymaking business unit or is it a demo? The degree of entitlement here... this is an OPPORTUNITY for someone else to do this, but for all the other languages! Why does it have to be Google who do everything?
- grishka 6y agoLet's be honest. Is there any Google product that isn't "a demo" at this point? When I updated to Android 10 last year, on a fully stock Pixel, it broke on me. I had to wipe the data for the MediaStore content provider to regain the ability to use anything related to media files. And that's me who figured it out by knowing what to look for and reading logs because I've been making Android apps since 2011, the average user would've had no idea. After paying $700 for a phone, I do kinda feel entitled for it to not break after a system update. As far as the new products go, I'm just a bit tired that everything actually interesting and useful that Google puts out remains US-only for about forever. That's it. On a second thought, the search and the ad network probably aren't demos. > this is an OPPORTUNITY for someone else to do this So is there an open API for that? I doubt.
- elliottinvent 6y agoIt’s hilarious that Google think an agent in a call centre that’s working to a revenue target will wait while you answer the phone. Almost as hilarious as the Duplex demo when Duplex called the hair salon and booked an appointment. How it actually would have gone: Duplex: dial +15556789012 Salon: Hello, how can I help? Duplex: I’d like to book an appointment for next week, what times are available? Hair salon: who do you normally have? Duplex: Melanie Hair Salon: Melanie’s amazing isn’t she, she has so many clients. She’s off at the moment because she’s in Bermuda with her new boyfriend - he’s so hot, hey Natalie is taking on her clients, you might have met her - she usually does blow dries. Duplex: [ERROR] I’d like to book with Melanie. Hair salon: She’s in Bermuda. I just said that, Natalie can fit you in at 3:15 on Thursday. Is that ok? Duplex: is that with Melanie? Hair salon: No. Duplex: ok, bye.
- lern_too_spel 6y agoThat feature launched years ago. Presumably, it works or I would have seen lots of blog posts complaining about it.
- jfoster 6y agoI found a video of a restaurant receiving a booking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_FuvIwSxT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_FuvIwSxT4
- elliottinvent 6y agoSure, but that’s the happy path and a simple example. What about when the restaurant says something unexpected, as humans do: “We’ve just taken delivery of some great lobsters but we need 24 hours notice if you’re ordering a full one, would you like to pre-order?” “due to social distancing, I need to let you know that we greet diners at the door now so please don’t come into the restaurant until you’ve been greeted.” etc (probably bad examples but you get the idea) My point is, the only way this works reliably is when the call recipient knows they’re talking to a machine and act accordingly. It’s what we all already do to communicate with call centre AI. Of course I see the benefit of another thing making the reservation, I just don’t think a synthesised voice calling a human is anywhere close to the best way to do it. It will cause problems and inconvenience for businesses until Google offer them a tool to answer the phone. Then that’ll be an even worse experience.
- ekanes 6y agoDang! 9 years ago we announced an app that did this right here on Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2285594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2285594 How we did it: We hired the AT&T lady to make a recording that said, "Press 1 for your next caller". We played that on a loop for operators. When we detected a DTMF "1" we'd call your cellphone and connect the calls. We had most of the big companies in the app, but failed in the end because we couldn't find a business model. My first VC-funded startup. :) Site is still up! (But not longer mine) http:/www.fastcustomer.com/ What I'm up to now: http://www.happymonday.com/ http://www.happymonday.com/ (helping people find work based on mutual values, priorities and functional work culture fit.)
- tantalor 6y agoDid you try to pitch it to a phone maker? This sounds like an idea that sells a phone, not something you would buy.
- ekanes 6y agoGreat point. We ended up speaking with Telstra (big Aussie telecom) about rolling us out in their Android phones, but it didn't go anywhere.
- gowld 6y agoYou should have played ads while the caller was no hol--- uh, oh. Why did you need VC for this?
- ekanes 6y agoI couldn't afford to fund development of it myself. It was a small team, and we were careful with the capital. We raised $750k. Making the phone calls was also a cost that scaled up (Twilio, etc)
- bluebknight 6y agoWe did something similar about 6 years ago. The user gets a chat interface while one of our operators transcribe the conversation both ways. I believe Path Talk did something similar too. I'm curious about how you raised so much money?
- BenoitEssiambre 6y agoI initially read that as "Say Goodbye to Old Music". I thought they were rubbing it in that they were throwing out all my music I had uploaded to Google Play Music (last time I checked, outside the US, it isn't possible to move the music to Youtube Music).
- chrysoprace 6y ago> ... in the U.S. Thanks Google, for geolocking a feature which is useful internationally, since people outside the U.S. apparently don't use telephones.
- imtavi 6y agoI recently made a video about the soul-destroying nature of hold music! Link is here, if you're in the mood for a poor attempt at humor: https://twitter.com/tavinathanson/status/1300643251356016641 https://twitter.com/tavinathanson/status/1300643251356016641
- jonnycomputer 6y agoand here I thought Google was going to support decent customer service. ):
- Cd00d 6y agoI hope the AI can detect the head fakes I get. I spent a lot of time on hold with a regional telecom company early in pandemic WFH trying to upgrade our internet. The hold music was interrupted every 20 or so seconds with a "hello, thank you for calling..." message that startled me into thinking I was off hold every single time, but was really just an advert for other services.
- Slow_Hand 6y agoOff-topic, but related: I've always wondered why someone hasn't offered a muzak-type service that is built around algorithmic generation of music. In my estimation, the state of algorithmic music doesn't currently allow for the compelling listening that we're used to with most "human" music, but I can see it being good enough for situations like call-holding or similarly ambient situations like restrooms or lobbies. It could be somewhat bland, but it's content shifts subtly enough to avoid irritation over the course of ten minutes. In my head, I hear something like the kind of minimal techno that Ricardo Villalobos is known for. Long, evolving, beatscapes that slowly transform over the course of an hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZWdWzMdndc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZWdWzMdndc I was once put on hold at a music equipment rental shop and heard a decidedly "non-muzak" drum and synthesizer loop. When the rep took me off hold they explained that I was hearing a live feed of some electronic instruments that they had running in the back room. He then put me back on hold in order to demonstrate him playing around with the synthesizers that were on loop. That really made my day.
- dvirsky 6y agoThere are a couple of companies doing that.
- elktea 6y agoI can't believe there's no standard in SIP to display the 'IVR' on your phone as a menu and have it give you a ring once an agent is available yet
- elliottinvent 6y agoA small team and I are working on this problem. We’ve recently announced a DNS-based protocol (1) to store structured data for domains, in time we hope to issue domain names for every telephone number (e.g. 44123456789.telephone). To claim a number you answer a call to that number. It would enable us to store open data for phone numbers, making phone numbers something we can interrogate for IVR menu data before a call is made - helping navigate it automatically - it could also present caller ID when receiving a call. However, we’ve got _lots_ of work to do on this. 1. https://www.num.uk https://www.num.uk
- discordance 6y agoUh oh, I anticipate a load of audio captchas coming on asking whether this is hold music or not
- vmception 6y agoooooh this is the introduction to a new service
- GhostVII 6y agoI feel like this could lead to massive wait times, as people stop dropping out of the queue. If I have a problem that isn't urgent, normally I would hang up after waiting for a while, but with this you don't have any reason to so peak wait times could go up a lot.
- baryphonic 6y agoI'm not going to lie: my first thought was that Google was cancelling yet another product. Only issue I had was that I'd never heard of a product called "Google Hold Music."
- josteink 6y agoYou're not the only one. I had the exact same thoughts.
- Waterfall 6y agoJust press 0 until an operator comes. That's what I do. You don't need AI for that. This is too high tech for no reason. Might as well use an AI on your toothbrush that tells you where you need to brush more with an accelerometer and camera in the brush. Overkill. Tech users tend to have an issue putting tech into everything. They will insist/injecting on strange changes like moving with a drone for short distances instead of vehicles or other changes that have little benefit.
- maneesh 6y agoI’ve used gethuman.com as a free service for this for almost a decade now.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoReally interesting. What would be really cool is AI technology that answers calls from unknown numbers and figures out if that is a legitimate call. If so, it alerts you, if not, it can be told to try to keep the spammer on the line for 10 minutes or so by having a conversation with them.
- suyash 6y agoNow google wants to listen to your calls...great..wonder if there ever will be a privacy boundary with these companies.
- gigamike 6y agoNot gonna lie, when I saw this headline, I thought it was Google announcing they are killing another product
- kingkool68 6y agoI remember a startup nearly 10 years ago that did something similar http://www.fastcustomer.com/ http://www.fastcustomer.com/ Pretty cool that this feature is not built in to the operating system.
- kumarvvr 6y agoThe obvious solution would be to have the company call you, instead of you waiting forever on the phone. But no, companies dont do that.
- snvzz 6y agoI can queue for a game of mahjong, so why can't I queue for a support call? It's appalling there's no protocol extending phone calls for this yet.
- biryani_chicken 6y agoBut will this help me get a real support person for Google's products?
- jfoster 6y agoDoes this feature really have to be geo-locked & only available on specific hardware?
- TonyTrapp 6y agoThe way the title was capitalized, I thought Google was just about to can yet another product :-)
- martin_a 6y agoWhen have you actually phoned a company the last time and were put on hold? In the day and age of live chats, mails and whatnot, I haven't made calls to any company for quite some time. If it's important, somebody will call me. That's the way it should work, not me going on my knees and begging to talk to someone who takes money from me.
- Jsharm 6y agoWe did this at a hackathon once https://devpost.com/software/easydial https://devpost.com/software/easydial - Very cool to see this in production!
- codecamper 6y agoI had this idea 10 years ago. doh!
- fareesh 6y agoI'm assuming there is some ML model running on-device which can detect whether or not the hold music is over. When features like this are rolled out they almost never mention: a) Battery usage b) Heat When I use my phone to record a video, it heats up. When I use the Google Maps AR directions, it heats up and also drains the battery like crazy. If your phone is heating up, and you put a skin or shell on it, is the phone and feature designed for this scenario? So if I'm on hold for 20 minutes, am I risking my hardware because they built this feature? Users ought to reject advertising like this unless there is disclosure of how it will impact these things. Also for how long can this feature run before killing my entire battery? What if I'm travelling and calling the airline from the airport with 25% battery? If this luxury costs me 15% battery for a 15 minute hold, I don't want it.
- animationwill 6y agoI don't mind hold music, but it's the constant fake interruption with advertisements that interrupt the hold music every 30 seconds that destroys your ability to multitask while waiting. Looking at you AT&T.
- dreamcompiler 6y agoStrike One: Only works on Google-branded phones. Which among other things means Google harvests data from it, because otherwise they wouldn't do it. Strike Two: Stupid kludge. The right solution is a DTMF code that plays iff a real human answers, so it only requires two transistors rather than a 50-kilowatt tensor network to recognize. That would have to be legislated, of course. Strike Three: Hiring Mechanical Turk to "wait on hold for me" is probably easier.
- neop1x 6y agoIt's nice but then the other side will wait for you to return to the call. I actually though that Google Assistant would talk with me during the hold time and attempt to resolve my request by caller-defined Frequently TalkedAbout Topics before reaching the human. Or maybe in the future just let the Assistant know what you need and let the Assistant talk with the representative without your intervention. Then I would return to the phone hour later and the Assistant would tell me the summary of the call.
- chkaloon 6y agoWhat I want is an app that can actually navigate the menu system to get a live person for me. Could try "0" or "#" to see if that works first, and get more complicated from there. If the call drops in the process, should be able to call back to keep trying. That process is the most frustrating part for me. I'm already able to put my phone on speaker and do something else during the hold part. It's getting to the hold that is the most maddening. Could even have an optional cloud-backed version that memorizes common companies' phone trees.