
Google’s Voice Assistant Could Talk Its Way Into Call Centers - ourmandave
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/googles-controversial-voice-assistant-could-talk-its-way-into-call-centers
======
joshuak
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
> 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)

~~~
dgzl
> I refuse to believe that multiple people over the course of a year are all
> incompetent

Those are your words, homie. The parent simply called out call-centers for
being ineffective, which I would agree, given my own experience with them. I
would contend that the workers are generally skilled and agreeable, rather the
hop-skip-dance that needs to take place every time a call-center is used, is
painful and ancient. Imagine a situation where your own digital PA already
knows your account number, address, phone, etc., allowing you to simply
provide a courteous hello before asking your question.

------
protonimitate
>> 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.

~~~
Spooky23
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.

~~~
candiodari
The problem with call centers, as an ex-IT guy for several of them, is not the
people, but the interface they have to the company behind them.

People expect call centers to be able to do anything. Companies hiring call
centers give them 2 or 3 options in a clunky web interface. Or worse, access
to a ticketing system. Management does not want the call center to be able to
do things, or wants certain metrics (no more than 10 unsubscribings per month
- that sort of thing), and this then gets translated in "incentives" for the
people answering the calls.

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sseth
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.

~~~
VLM
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?

~~~
tomjen3
In that scenario people wouldn't sign up for recurring services, or it would
end up being like the new law in Cali where they have to let you unsubscribe
on the internet.

Also having a robot repeating: "my customer number is blabla and I would like
to cancel my account", "has my account been canceled yet" doesn't exactly take
a lot of cycles.

In fact it might be worth it to create cancelation as a service bot, where for
a small fee, you can get the bot to call and cancel for you.

------
ourcat
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
You get angry because the robot suck. It doesn't have to suck.

~~~
wildrhythms
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.

------
untog
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
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
I struggle to think of a less applicable situation for that quote.

~~~
kaybe
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
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.

------
131012
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.

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cs702
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...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-call-centers-are-there-in-the-world)

[b]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation)

~~~
forgottenpass
>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?

------
joeblau
If I got a call from Duplex and I asked

    
    
        Are you a robot?
    

Is it required to tell me the truth?

~~~
icebraining
Required by what/whom?

~~~
joeblau
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.

------
seanwilson
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.

------
VLM
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.

------
unholiness
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.

------
Bishonen88
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.

~~~
mrfusion
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.

------
dbcurtis
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.

------
gruglife
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.

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segmondy
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.

------
bloodcarter
Actually this is what we do at Dasha.AI: just listen to the calls here
[http://dasha.ai/en](http://dasha.ai/en)

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

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jgalt212
TellMe 2.0

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellme_Networks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellme_Networks)

------
whatyoucantsay
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!

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

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

~~~
VLM
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
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.

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

