
CallJoy – A cloud-based phone agent for small businesses - el_duderino
https://www.blog.google/technology/area-120/calljoy-small-business-phone-technology/
======
herodotus
>Then, when the phone rings, the automated CallJoy agent answers, greets
callers with a custom message and provides basic business information (like
hours of operation).

Just what the world needs. More jabber before I can speak to a human. No, I
don't want your hours of operation, unless you are closed. If you are open
then I want (a) a human to answer; or (b) a message that says "Happy and
Healthy Foods Here. Sorry we are on the phone at the moment. We estimate a
wait time of 3 minutes. Please hold on, or press 1 to leave us a message."

Usually the amount of robo-chatter I get is so excessive that I have tuned out
anyway.

~~~
derefr
I mean, I _do_ want hours of operation in one specific case—to know whether
those hours have changed (i.e. are shorter) given that it's currently a
holiday. Your regular hours probably show up when Googling your business name,
but any holiday-specific hours won't.

Sadly, you probably won't update your IVR system with your holiday hours
either. You _always_ end up having to talk to a real person to find out. It's
kind of ridiculous.

~~~
notatoad
> Your regular hours probably show up when Googling your business name, but
> any holiday-specific hours won't.

they often do. Google is quite insistent on getting businesses to update their
holiday hours for any common holidays, and when you look up business hours on
a holiday you see the result of this - many businesses do update their holiday
hours, and the business listing tells you whether the business owner has
confirmed that the hours are correct for the holiday, or they have not updated
the page for the holiday.

~~~
benatkin
They do but it's worse than useless. For every time they have accurate holiday
hours, they 10 times show me a bullshit warning that the hours may vary due to
the holidays when a) I already know that and b) the business is open regular
hours on some religious holiday that I don't observe.

~~~
stanleydrew
You're mad that an interface shows a warning when the data isn't known to be
accurate? What do you propose would be better?

~~~
benatkin
simplicity would be better IMO. open source would be better. not changing up
an app I already like would be better.

In many ways Gopher was better than the web, because a gopher client could
make more decisions about how to present the data than the web, for which the
presentation is mostly prescribed by the content provider.

~~~
notatoad
what are you talking about? how does gopher or open source have any relation
to the hours of operation that a business lists on their google maps page?

~~~
benatkin
It’s about how the page is being overly helpful instead of giving me just the
information I asked for.

------
benologist
Google, renowned experts in dodging expenses like customer support, release a
customer service tool for other businesses to use that they will subsequently
shut down to save money.

------
Twirrim
"My team within Area 120, Google’s workshop for experimental projects,
conducted testing and found that small businesses receive an average of 13
phone calls every day."

That's really not many phone calls. I'm not surprised they had to try and
scale it up to suggest it's a big issue.

~~~
imglorp
I have a refinement to suggest if someone is looking for a business.

How many contractors (lawn, roof, carpenter, whatever) have you ever dealt
with that are wizards at what they do but don't have the cycles to return a
phone call or keep you updated on your appointment to save their life? If
you're lucky, their spouse/nephew/etc is a part time coordinator? Maybe they
call you back at the end of the week when they do all their calls? Ick.

These guys need someone to keep track of their schedules and appointments and
keep customers well communicated. THAT'S IT.

I've abandoned so many engagements because of not doing this one thing.

~~~
derefr
That's usually called an agent.

Honestly, I'm surprised "agents for sharing-economy freelancers" hasn't taken
off yet.

~~~
notatoad
Isn't that essentially the role that all the apps powering the "sharing
economy" are providing?

~~~
mikepurvis
Right, but I think the idea would be something where the person providing the
actual useful service enlists the help of the app/agent and is in control of
the relationship, rather than the other way around.

------
nutanc
We at Ozonetel have been in the cloud business phone system business for
sometime now. A couple of quick observations:

1\. Surprisingly, the Calljoy website does not have a call in number or a demo
number. This is supposed to be a disruptive technology, put a demo number that
people can call in and test.

2\. The Google brand is not there anywhere on the Calljoy website(except at
the very bottom).

3\. Rather than release a free beta product, which is the norm, Google has
launched a paid commercial product.

4\. Haven't tested the call quality yet. I think they maybe launching this on
the Google voice platform.

5\. Not sure why it should be a separate product, would have made more sense
as a Gsuite add on.

6\. Businesses need support. The success of this product will depend on the
24/7 support that Google can provide to business owners.

~~~
ethagknight
Re part 6, surely there’s some irony in providing customer support for a
product that avoids providing actual customer support by making me listen to
robots for its best guess of what I’m looking for.

~~~
nutanc
True that :)

The death of the phone call has been heralded for many years now. I am
guessing it's gonna stick on for some more time, at least for business use
cases.

------
JadeNB
Do we intentionally not summarise things? I'm not quite sure of the norm.
Here's an early paragraph that seems useful:

With CallJoy, small businesses have access to the same customer service
options that have historically only been available to larger corporations. If
you’re associated with small business using CallJoy, here’s how it works:
After a quick setup, you’ll receive a local phone number. CallJoy will
immediately begin blocking unwanted spam calls so you receive the calls that
matter—the ones from customers. Then, when the phone rings, the automated
CallJoy agent answers, greets callers with a custom message and provides basic
business information (like hours of operation).

~~~
modzu
i do appreciate seeing tldrs in the comments, thanks :)

------
luckydata
I see a lot of folks focusing on the negatives (because it's from Google) but
my experience is small businesses are AWFUL at answering the phone. My barber
for example has no online booking, and rarely answers the phone. I stopped
going to him even if he's by far the best in the area, having a service like
this will definitely make small businesses more reachable.

~~~
saaaaaam
My barber doesn’t have online booking or phone booking. You walk in and take a
seat, or wait in the line if it’s busy.

I asked him why not. He told me that he used to take bookings, and stopped for
a few reasons:

1\. A lot of people book appointments and don’t show up, or show up late,
causing him down time and reduces his income. If a regular client shows up
late for his 30 minute appointment does he make another customer - also booked
- wait?

2\. He can cut some people’s hair in 15 minutes while others it might take 40.
By having booking it limits this flexibility. He can also charge more or less
depending on how long it takes.

3\. Walk ins are self regulating. People know when it’s likely to be busy and
when it’s likely to be quieter. If they don’t mind waiting they come at a busy
time. If they want to be in and out quickly they go off peak.

~~~
driverdan
As a counterpoint, this is only a problem for barbershops that aren't very
busy. The barber I used to go to is insanely busy. No matter when you show up
the wait is at least 30 min, usually 1-2 hours.

I switched to a place that's more expensive but has appointments. Not wasting
1-2h is worth an extra $10.

------
ttul
Although I run a software company - not a traditional, "small business," \-
phone spam is such a gigantic annoyance on our office line that I stopped
listing the number. Yet sometimes people find us who are legitimate. I look
forward to having Google screen the calls and provide some basic information
to people who are calling for some higher purpose like to obtain pricing
information.

~~~
mimixco
"Screening" potential customers is a notoriously bad idea. Spam calls are
their own animal but you don't want to pre-qualify or screen people who might
become customers because you really don't know anything about them or the
business value they might represent.

~~~
bouncing
You're screening calls, not potential customers. Presumably, interested
parties still get through, while people who just want some tidbit don't.

~~~
mimixco
So there's a robot who can tell before it answers the phone if the person is a
potential customer or not? Cool! :-(

------
zitterbewegung
When people ask for startup ideas they shout just clone new google services
and then once it is cancelled you will get many more users .

Maybe even competing with them would work.

~~~
schnevets
I'm sure GrubHub, delivery.com, and all of the other takeout startups are
already working to clone this technology. Once an established partner of these
small businesses can do the job, this will be sold for spare parts.

It makes me wonder why Google didn't just offer this as a service to other
SaaS startups. Don't they have some type of cloud platform for that? /s

~~~
nutanc
It is surprising why Google just didn't offer this as a service. You could
already build something like this using platforms like Twilio, KOOKOO __(in
India) etc. We at Ozonetel, already provide a business phone service similar
to this for our customers using Google speech as one speech engine, though
spam detection is not yet inbuilt. After looking at the launch, I just quickly
put together a bot page if someone wants to try it
out,[https://ering.me/ozonetel/spa/](https://ering.me/ozonetel/spa/)

Note __:I am a co founder of KOOKOO.

------
theyinwhy
Or how to give small upstarting companies the same tedious automated phone
robots of big corporations.

Never forget: when being a startup having a "talk directly to someone
important" spirit is a big plus and a usp big corporations can never have.

------
badrequest
Just what consumers have been clamoring to do: talk to more customer service
robots.

~~~
bdcravens
A feature that I've yet seen implemented: white-listing numbers to bypass the
robot

~~~
reaperducer
Bank of America seems to do this somewhat.

If I call from the phone that's connected to my Bank of America account, I can
access my account with just a four-digit number. If I call from another phone,
I have to go through the full user verification.

~~~
mcny
Can it tell the difference between calling from your phone as opposed to
calling from your Amazon Alexa device if you have one? I mean how does it
handle spoofing?

------
judge2020
> If the customer calling would like to complete a task which can be done
> online, like place a to-go order or book an appointment, CallJoy’s virtual
> agent will send the customer an SMS text message containing a URL.

I don't think many people who call, with the intent to talk to a human, want
to be directed to a website. I'm sure this will appeal to the businesses
though.

------
antpls
I understand the feeling of people about not wanting this. So far, calling
meant you _really_ wanted to speak to an human.

But let's be honest : this is an awesome opportunity to gather more data and
to get closer to more natural human interface with computers, through voices
and conversation.

I support this initiative.

------
Theodores
This sounds like a variation of hell for specialist retail. You want the sale
and that call from the customer making an enquiry is your chance to make sure
you are going to be ready for them. You want to have them arrive to ask for
you by name to continue the sale.

Small businesses, e.g. the hair salon, should have a student or someone on the
desk who can take the calls so the working staff don't have to.

There are ways to be succinct on the phone and to wind things up without
wasting customer time.

I don't believe Google have a clue about customer service and I don't believe
any ultra clever AI robot solution can help. Nobody phones up their local
supermarket to 'see if they are open' or if the 'stock tinned peas'. In
specialist retail you want to take the call and convert it into a sale. I
don't believe this product really helps with that.

I also am aware that 98.3% of customers have Googled a business before they
step inside the store (in the realm of specialist retail or services). So you
really want to markup your web homepage with the required JSON-LD for the
opening hours, address details and other basics that would be a meaningless
interruption. In that way people don't even have to call. If people are
calling up about these things, e.g. holiday opening hours, it is not a phone
solution that is needed, it is basic information on the website.

We have created these amazing ways for people to contact us, with it people
create more remarkable ways of hiding. Not answering the phone, not answering
emails is the norm, businesses should not be hiding this way out of courtesy.

------
ocdtrekkie
You know what word doesn't exist in this, that really confuses me is missing?
Duplex.

They've got this super advanced human-like AI feature for making voice
calls... and they're introducing a rudimentary automated call system like
every other company out there. (With the added part that Google records all of
the voice data for themselves, of course.)

~~~
jsty
I'd imagine they probably want to collect a good sample of data from their
prospective customers to ensure it works across a broad range of businesses
before going fully automated.

They could do this by going round loads of small businesses and asking for
call recordings to test against, but launching with a manual offering first to
collect the data seems so much easier.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Possibly, but this is also coming from that Area 120 internal startup
incubator... rather than the team behind Duplex.

------
vincentmarle
So if one part of Google is working on the automation of making the calls [1]
and another part of Google is automating the answering of calls, does that
mean that Google will be on the phone with itself all day?

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/08/google-
du...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/08/google-duplex-
assistant-phone-calls-robot-human)

------
egeozcan
So they say that they will be blocking unwanted calls. Google is eating our
mail[0], and now they will eat our calls too? Thinking again, I guess it's not
a huge deal as average person won't (and can't) be operating their own phone
service anytime soon.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756125)

------
codegeek
"After a quick setup, you’ll receive a local phone number. CallJoy will
immediately begin blocking unwanted spam calls so you receive the calls that
matter—the ones from customers"

Would really like to know how they implement the spam call blocking. Spam
calls especially to businesses are a huge problem in the United States and
anyone who solves that problem will make billions.

~~~
Operyl
Listen to a couple seconds of audio, compare to known spam calls (they just
have a database of billions at this point), profit.

------
newman8r
The name seems kind of odd for a google product.

The anti-spam feature and voice analytics sound cool. I'm curious how they
decide what's spam though - I know there's a few services that claim to do
this, but since a lot of times local numbers are the ones being spoofed, can
they guarantee a legitimate call won't be filtered out?

~~~
morpheuskafka
I think the difference is, CallJoy will listen to your calls and transcribe
them as part of its features. So they can do pattern matching in the actual
content of the call (similar to the way an email spam filter works) rather
than relying on metadata alone.

~~~
newman8r
That probably works if there's anything to transcribe, although the goal of
the robocallers is probably to get transferred to a human being as soon as
possible (i.e. pressing 0, or just doing nothing and waiting for the call to
be transferred to a human, which I see happening a lot on my own small
business phone system). Unfortunately those are also behaviors that legitimate
callers might exhibit.

I'm guessing google is reasonably happy with how it works though

------
mimixco
The world does not need another service where people are expected to talk to
(argue with?) robots.

In all the time that I worked at IBM, a company that certainly could have
implemented automated call responses, we never did. When customers called IBM,
a human answered the phone. Always.

~~~
reaperducer
Good point. If I'm going to bother to call, the company should be bothered to
answer.

I hate talking to people on the phone, but it's unavoidable. So if I call
someone, it really takes a bit of mental effort. Plus, I don't work in a place
where it's customary for people to just make personal phone calls in the
office. Doing so would be very conspicuous and uncomfortable.

(Disclaimer: Currently sipping from an IBM coffee mug.)

------
morpheuskafka
How come this looks like a completely separate product with no Google
branding? Why is this not part of G Suite or GCP? People like single, simple
pricing models, not an additional bill.

------
tgb29
Excited to see if it gains traction. I've been waiting for Google to release a
product like this after they released their Duplex demo last year.

------
RyanShook
Interested in trying this but given Google’s history of launching and
subsequently shutting down non-core businesses I’m very hesitant.

------
andy_ppp
Number of Call Center workers in the US: 3 million

Guess at average salary: $25000?

That's a $75bn market eventually if Google keeps improving this technology,
just in the US.

Buy GOOG.

~~~
willio58
Is the size of a market only defined by how much the workers are payed in that
market?

~~~
andy_ppp
Just trying to give people a potential amount Google could be making from this
type of technology as it improves. I just found it interesting when I did that
maths, maybe the market is bigger or smaller - what do you think?

~~~
benologist
I think there are two problems with this:

1) call centers already have software to record calls and quantify results

2) Google have only ever provided the minimum support mandated by consumer
protection laws, none at all wherever they're not compelled to provide it,
it's a huge leap to go from that to improving call centers...

------
mychael
Interesting that Google isn't mentioned in the name of the product or anywhere
in the ad. That seems like a break from tradition.

------
js4ever
"for a flat monthly fee of $39" I would expect a lower price from google...
But it seems free or cheap services era from google is finished. They now
started to aggressively monetize. This movement started with google maps
pricing increase...

~~~
bdcravens
> But it seems free or cheap services era from google is finished. They now
> started to aggressively monetize.

Or in other words, behave like a rational business. I would also say that the
era where the user IS the product is (hopefully) coming to an end, and this is
how Google moves forward in that world.

------
totally
How does this fit into Google's broader strategy? ie. why is this a thing?

~~~
remir
Training their AI to understand human conversation (see Google Duplex). Press
fastforward a couple of years and you have a system that can automate call
centers.

------
paxys
I have never understood what the point of having an automated phone line is in
today's world. If I call a number, I expect to speak to a human. Otherwise I'm
always going to your website anyways.

------
cm2012
Shuttered in 3,2,1.

Seriously, this has the revenue potential of a nice SaaS app. Not bad, but not
Google level. There is no way Google doesn't close this business, probably in
less than a year.

~~~
SheinhardtWigCo
It's not about revenue, it's about data:

> Whether the customer speaks with you, talks to an employee, or just
> interacts directly with the CallJoy agent, the call will be recorded and
> transcribed for quality purposes.

This is a play to get the content of conversations between customers and small
businesses.

~~~
Maxious
This also integrates small businesses with an ordering API.

Imagine if Google Maps (inc. via Search/Assistant) could replace all the
industry specific apps like UberEats/Grubhub... there's an app for that
[https://developers.google.com/maps-
booking/](https://developers.google.com/maps-booking/)

------
duxup
>Then, when the phone rings, the automated CallJoy agent answers, greets
callers with a custom message and provides basic business information (like
hours of operation). \--

>If the customer calling would like to complete a task which can be done
online, like place a to-go order or book an appointment, CallJoy’s virtual
agent will send the customer an SMS text message containing a URL.

That sounds kinda handy.

Side note: That damn status bar that falls from the top on the blog is a pain,
if you read anywhere near the top of your screen it falls down to cover the
text.

------
bdcravens
So even more numbers that we can all immediately start pressing "0" the second
the line picks up.

------
anotherevan
“For all the ways technology has improved your life, please press one…”

------
mxuribe
So, is this like Google voice but more for small businesses?

------
fjp
Which telecom providers are they using under the hood?

------
sercand
Google should include this kind of projects under the Google Cloud Platform.
Google has too many products, and they can't integrate well with each other
because of this.

~~~
mimixco
The real reason Google's products don't work very well is that they are an
_advertising_ business. They make upwards of 94% of their revenue from
advertising -- not technology, not software, and certainly not customer
service, an area in which they are severely lacking.

The idea of Google defining customer service standards represents a step
backwards, not forward.

~~~
bouncing
FWIW, when I've been buying ads, Google not only has customer service, the
customer service is damn good. I guess that's why it's called _customer_
service.

~~~
drusepth
Hardware support has also been amazing over the years, as far back as the
original Nexus 7 (2012) to replacing a broken Nexus 5X in Ireland last year.
Probably the best customer service I've encountered from any company that I
can think of.

~~~
mimixco
I've had a Google-branded phone since the original Nexus and I used to agree
with you, but their support on the Pixel 2's extended warranty (which they
offered because of early problems) has been a game of passing the buck with
Verizon.

------
goombastic
Google needs to print expiry dates on its products before launching.

