Ryan Shank reacts to Google Duplex, an AI that calls businesses to book appointments. In the demo, it calls a salon, speaks naturally, and schedules a haircut for Lisa. The technology uses natural language understanding and deep learning to handle real conversations.
Chapters
Alright guys, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the Google Duplex. They just announced it yesterday. I watched the video today. I saw it on LinkedIn. Someone shared it. I think it's incredible. I think it's amazing. If you haven't seen the video, I'm gonna play the video right now and then I'm gonna talk about it. I have so many thoughts about this and it totally makes a lot of sense. So here's the video for those of you that haven't seen it.
Our vision for Assistant is to help you get things done. It turns out a big part of getting things done is making a phone call. You may want to get an oil change schedule, maybe call a plumber in the middle of the week, or even schedule a haircut appointment. We think AI can help with this problem. So let's go back to this example. Let's say you want to ask Google to make you a haircut appointment on Tuesday between 10 and noon. What happens is the Google Assistant makes the call seamlessly in the background for you. So what you're going to hear is the Google Assistant actually calling a real salon to schedule the appointment for you. Let's listen.
Hello, happening out here. Hi, I'm calling to book a woman's haircut for a client. Um, I'm looking for something on May 3rd. Sure, give me one second. Mm-hmm. Sure, what time are you looking for around? At 12 PM. We do not have a 12 PM available. The closest we have to that is a 1:15. Do you have anything between 10 AM and, uh, 12 PM? Depending on what service she would like. What service is she looking for? Just a woman's haircut for now. Okay, we have a 10 o'clock. 10 AM is fine. Okay, what's her first name? The first name is Lisa. Okay, perfect. So I will see Lisa at 10 o'clock on May 3rd. Okay, great. Thanks. Great. Have a great day.
Bye. That was a real call you just heard.
The amazing thing is the Assistant can actually understand the nuances of conversation. We've been working on this technology for many years. It's called Google Duplex. It brings together all our investments over the years in natural language understanding, deep learning, text-to-speech. By the way, when we are done, the Assistant can give you a confirmation notification saying your appointment has been taken care of.
Okay, so that's one, that's crazy, kind of creepy, uh, totally makes sense. I want to talk about a couple points, uh, that he makes, right? So he basically says that a big part of getting things done is making a phone call, okay? People need to get things done, they're busy, they have assistants, literally just to make phone calls. Now Google is putting a ton of resources, combining all these different entities that they own to basically make more phone calls because that is what businesses rely on to get things done. Another point that he made was that 60% of small businesses don't have an online booking system. They literally rely on phone calls. So the whole idea behind this is actually amazing. It's going to drive more phone calls to local businesses so that they can do more commerce, okay? It's going to make consumers' lives easier, uh, so that they can actually book more appointments. They can go to their local business, they can get haircuts, they can go, you know, maid service, pet, all of that, right? Home services. They're gonna be able to book more appointments, eat at restaurants at a rate, at a higher rate, and not have to rely on humans to do this. So the end of the day, I mean, phone calls are actually exploding right now. They're exploding even more than they were. People were doing a ton of search on mobile, which they still are. Basically what that was doing is that was increasing the amount of phone calls that were happening to local businesses. And now that's still gonna happen, but now it's gonna be coupled with an AI assistant that is just calling businesses all day, every day, And if you think about the quality of these calls, I mean, this assistant is literally told to call and book an appointment. The quality of those phone calls is so high. I mean, if you just answer that call, you're gonna book the appointment if you're the servicer, right? Because what's happening is consumers are not relying on this AI assistant to go out and like do the research. It's like, hey, just get it done, just get it done. So couple points that are incredibly important here is one, that you just answer the phone, literally answer the phone. So you need to be using Track Numbers. You need to be knowing, you know, all your phone calls. Are you missing the calls? And if you are missing the calls, like you need to be able to get notifications and things like that. Incredibly, incredibly important to answer the phone. That is like step 1, right? Step 2 is that you want to track where these are coming from. I mean, if Google Assistant, how are they like finding and sourcing these businesses? Or is it from Google My Business? Is it going to be from Yelp reviews? Reviews are important. So at the end of the day, you want to track, you know, how these phone numbers and these phone calls are actually getting generated. Double, triple down on marketing efforts to generate more phone calls. Guys, this is so incredibly important. I'm so excited. And I think everyone out there should be incredibly excited. If you're a small business, if you're an agency working in lead gen for small businesses, I mean, this is such a— what I mean, what a time to be alive. But anyway, call tracking is important. Phone calls are important. And look, at the end of the day, we're just helping more businesses have— get things done, actually helping consumers get things done. And we're helping businesses generate more revenue, you know, and just have live better lives. And I'm super excited. You guys should be too. Check out PhoneWagon because we're going to help track all these calls from the Google Duplex AI and super pumped to work with you. My name's Ryan Shank. Let's chat.
