Google Duplex could have a new job in call centers

When we heard about Google Duplex for the first time, we thought of all the ways to reduce the time we had to spend on the phone – we would not need it anymore to worry about calling to make reservations at restaurants, chatting with customer service, or doing other boring tasks over the phone.

But what we have not really considered, it is the effectiveness of Duplex to play our counterpart – that is, play endless and tireless telemarketing that we can not all support, or the customer service representative who can not understand your request. Now, it seems that Google might be looking for more commercial ways to use its A.I. assistant. According to a report from The Information, Duplex could replace human callers, for better or for worse.

The information cited a person familiar with Google's plans pointing out that the technology giant is currently in negotiations with at least one potential commercial user looking to integrate Duplex into its operations. The company, an anonymous insurance company, would be interested in using A.I. assistant not as a marketer, but rather as a customer service agent. Because Duplex seems much more humane (and much more capable) than the automated systems you currently have to go through before you connect to a real person, it could help reduce the time that customers and agents have. Google's word said, "We are currently focusing on consumer use cases for Duplex technology, where we can help people do things, rather than apply it to cases where they are." 39, potential use. The spokesperson continued: "Duplex is designed to work in very specific use cases, and currently we are focusing on testing with restaurant reservations, hairdresser reservation, and vacation hours. with a limited set of trusted testers, it is important that we have a good experience, and we take a slow and measured approach by integrating learning and feedback from our tests. "

Of course, Google n & # 39; is not the only company to integrate the artificially intelligent voice assistants in the call centers. Amazon has already started marketing a version of Alexa designed to answer questions by phone and text, and The Information notes that IBM, Microsoft and Cisco are also looking for ways to bring their own AI tools into The mixture. It's no wonder that research firm ResearchAndMarkets predicts that cloud-based customer call centers will have a value of $ 21 billion by 2022, more than three times as much as the $ 6.8 billion in 2017.