Google’s Search Labs has an A.I. feature worth knowing about, that being “Ask for Me”. As of this writing, this is one of those experimental-phase A.I. products made available to a select group of people who will test it for Google. Its rollout has been slow, starting with nail salons and auto shops.
The Five Most-Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- For business owners, this technology will have positives and negatives.
- One noteworthy positive is that more customers will be willing to get information from your business, which could lead to more sales.
- A potential negative is that this could lead to less customer interactions for customers who would normally call, and could perhaps be upsold or just have a positive customer-service experience. So, A.I. may be taking the place of customers who without A.I. may have more likely been led to a sale.
- Another downside is that this could get people away from going onto your company’s website to search for information themselves. That could, in a somewhat ironic twist, end up putting a pre-Internet burden on companies by increasing the number of calls that go to a business.
- For business owners, keeping your website updated with the latest info in prominent spots on the site is one way to keep customers going to your site, while also enjoying the benefits of Ask for Me calls.
The Significance for Business Owners
Business owners can actually opt out of the automated calls in the settings of Google Business. So if you do not want to deal with this feature’s negatives and are okay with forgoing the positives, then that is an available option.
Since Ask for Me is still in an experimental phase, it may be some time before all kinds of businesses will be eligible to receive calls.
An upside to staying opted in that did not get a mention in the Key Takeaways section is how the convenience factor could influence consumer behavior.
Just speculating here, but making it much easier to get information from websites with even less than the usual effort of an internet search could lead to a boost in buying for consumers.
Why that would be is that making it easier to shop for something or set up an appointment or reservation could make the purchase seem a lot more attractive. The less involved the customer needs to be in getting to the purchase point, perhaps the more likely the customer will be to make the purchase.
What Ask for Me does for the customer is make gathering information about businesses’ services, products, and operations (e.g., holiday hours), much easier and with less hassle.
How Does Google Ask for Me Work?
Users will give Ask for Me some key features, such as car make and model, to direct Ask for Me in what to ask for.
After offering their contact info, users will get to sit back and let the A.I. do its work, which it shall report back to the user via their contact channel of choice (email or text).
This can save customers time and energy and can be especially useful.
A Caveat about This Service
A reservation the writer of this blog post has is the potential for hallucination in the A.I. relaying information back to the user.
Sometimes, hallucination may be hard to spot, as an A.I. hallucination is not always wildly obvious. For instance, mistaken information about a business’ pricing during a sale may not leap out as being hallucinatory.
A.I. may misinterpret information on the call, and pass this misinterpretation onto the customers, who may not have misinterpreted the information had they just made the calls themselves.
That brings up the issue of trust and time. It would take time to double-check the A.I.’s findings, but then that would just involve doing the same information search that the user went to Ask for Me to avoid doing in the first place.
In that case, then, customers craving convenience will likely be placing more trust than may be appropriate in this A.I.
The Last (But Not Least) Key Takeaway from This Blog Post
Google clearly wants to make this be useful for business owners as well, as it sets a quota for the amount of daily calls a business owner can receive from Ask for Me.
Also, Ask for Me will notify at the start of the call that it is an automated system by Google that is getting information for a user.
Overall, it remains to be seen whether this experimental project takes off and it becomes somewhat commonplace among customers.
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
GO AI the blog offers a combination of information about, analysis of, and editorializing on A.I. technologies of interest to business owners, with especial focus on the impact this tech will have on commerce as a whole.
On a usual week, there are multiple GO AI blog posts going out. Here are some notable recent articles:
- For Businesses and Other Organizations, What Makes a Successful Chatbot?
- IBM Watson vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini: How Will Each Affect Search Engines?
- Using A.I. to Find Resources for Business Owners
- How Would Restricting Open-Source A.I. Affect Business Owners?
- The EU’s A.I. Act Has Become Law: The Implications for Business Owners (Especially American)
In addition to our GO AI blog, we also have a blog that offers important updates in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), with blog posts like “Google Ends Its Plan to End Third-Party Cookies”.
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