Google Makes Calling Businesses Less Painful With Features for Seeing Wait Times, Phone Tree Options (techcrunch.com) 17
Alongside today's release of the new Pixel 6 smartphones, Google has again upgraded one of the device's most basic -- but often overlooked -- functions: the ability to make phone calls. From a report: In previous years, Google Assistant learned to screen your calls and make your reservations by phone via a technology called Duplex. Last year, it learned how to wait on hold for you, too. Today, Google is expanding some of these existing features and adding new ones -- including a tool that shows you the best time to call a business and a new Duplex-powered feature for navigating businesses' phone trees. With the Phone app on Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, a new feature called "Wait Times" will display the projected time it will take to get through to a person when dialing a toll-free number. You'll be able to see this information before you place the call now only for the present time, but also for the rest of the week. This information may allow you to make a better decision about when to place the call. [...] Another new addition is the "Direct My Call" feature, which will help you get through complicated phone trees when you dial a business. Instead of listening and trying to remember the many options presented (e.g. "Press 1 for hours and locations"), Google Assistant will translate the automated messages for you.
"Phone Tree Options" (Score:1)
Just put a human on the line please
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Just put a human on the line please
The human will probably be in India or Pakistan, so you won't understand them anyway.
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Just put a human on the line please
The human will probably be in India or Pakistan, so you won't understand them anyway.
I'd give a protip to these folk. Jamaican women. The ones I have dealt with have great English skills, and their accent is very nice.
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Agreed: one of the best calls that I had was with an agent in Jamaica. She was clear, had excellent situation skills, and immediately understood when I explained why their fast track mortgage refinance offer was unworkable for someone holding property in trust title.
My first experience was when I had been waiting over an hour on hold, and was waiting to unload some rage on someone. Then she answered, and in 5 minutes, had me wrapped around her little finger. She was really good - hell we were laughing by the end of the conversation. And her technical skills were also first rate.
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It's not cost effective for them to employ enough that you can always get through, which is why you end up with this broken mess of wasting your time being on hold. In some instances they actually profit from you being on hold via a reciprocal revenue sharing deal with the telco...
I'd much rather be able to send a message, and them respond to it within a few hours. I dont want to waste my time sitting on hold. If i need to actually speak interactively with someone, there should be a way to schedule such a c
What we really need (Score:2)
Is a function to find the extension of an actual person in a department that can actually help with whatever the reason for calling is.
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There is no such person.
If your problem is covered by the defined business cases and processes, it can be automated, if it isn't, you're out of luck. On purpose.
Does this mean you could (Score:3)
Call Google, or Bookface with an issue and actually talk to a human being?
I've submitted bug reports electronically, years later, have received no feedback, and the issue remains. (Fuck You Google Maps!)
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Call Google, or Bookface with an issue and actually talk to a human being?
Good point, it was called "eat your own dog food".
I remember the times of Visual C++ and Visual Basic, when it said that these products were good because Microsoft "eat their own dog food" and used them internally in their development teams. Google should do the same and demonstrate how they can use their own Pixel phones to reach a human being in Google's call center.
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This assumes that there are call centers with people who are supposed to solve your problem.
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Call Google, or Bookface with an issue and actually talk to a human being?
For most Google products the revenue per user is so low that handling a single support call would wipe out years of revenue, so it just doesn't make business sense.
Perhaps what Google should do is offer a paid support plan? If that were available, would you buy it? The risk there is that while the support plan payment would make it cost-effective to talk to users, it probably wouldn't generate enough revenue to fund changing products. In the case of clear bugs, or feature requests that are really compelli
we don't care (Score:2)
Pointless feature until you enable it worldwide.
Very ironic ... (Score:2)
Some times for drive issues I might get an email response. But even for paid things like google drive storage, there is nearly impossible to find which number to call. One would think I should be able to google for it, but somehow, if such numbers exist, they never show in the first ten screens.
Here's what we should teach people to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you buy something, call the call center of the manufacturer and see how you'll be treated after they got your money.
Duplex is pointless (Score:2)