AI phone calls are coming for small businesses. Here’s what to know and how to prepare.

If you’re a small business owner who’s learned to hang up the phone as soon as you hear a robot voice on the other end, you might want to hear it out a bit longer - it may be an AI agent calling on behalf of an actual customer.

Google recently announced it’s testing a new feature called “Ask for me,” which it says will use AI to call local businesses for pricing and availability. They first announced this technology in 2018, and have been using it since to do things like book restaurant reservations and verify Google Business Profile information. It’s worth watching the beginning of the original presentation to get a sense of what these calls can sound like.

Notice that the first few use cases he mentions include oil changes and salon appointments? Well, it’s then no wonder that this new experiment expands the capability to two new types of businesses: auto services and nail salons.

If the problem they’re trying to solve here is that most people don’t want to make a bunch of phone calls, and most small businesses don’t offer online booking, these sound like decent industries to start with. These types of businesses often have old websites they rarely update, while offering some standardized services people need regularly.

Fortunately for me, I just got access to try out the “Ask for me” feature, and my family has a need for both services - our Honda CR-V needs new tires, and my 5-year-old daughter wants a manicure.

So, I told Google what I needed and asked it to contact businesses for me. I then followed up with those businesses to see what the experience was like on their end.

Here’s what happened, with some thoughts for all local businesses on how to prepare for more of these AI agent interactions in the future.

Google “Ask for me” in action

I first tried to get pricing and availability for a tire replacement. Here’s what that looked like from my phone:

As you can see, it first gave me a list of relevant businesses, then the “Ask for me” card appeared further down the results page, which took me through a few prompts before I submitted the request. About 20 minutes later I got an email with information from two businesses it reached, and a list of others it couldn’t contact.

As soon as I got that email, I called the businesses it said it had contacted. One didn’t answer, which underscores why Google’s trying to do this in the first place. For the other, a guy answered but said I was the first phone call they received that morning. He guessed that Google either contacted an overseas call center or got the info off their website.

He also asked one important question Google didn’t ask - wheel size - and added he could get me in right away rather than that afternoon. Irony: AI is supposed to save time, but in this case the fastest way to get the job done would’ve been to talk to a human.

Now, the initial list of tire shops it contacted were all owned by the same parent company, so I tried again and got a new list of businesses, including some that were locally owned.

I followed up with two of them, who both confirmed they got a call from Google and couldn’t provide an exact price without a wheel size, but offered a price range. Google transcribed all that and relayed the message. One person said they didn’t even realize it was Google calling (although he admitted he was hard of hearing), while the other said Google announced itself and they had to speak slowly and clearly to be understood.

The kids manicure was a similar experience. Google emailed me that it found a local salon, and provided pricing and availability. The only salon it reached doesn’t have a website, only a profile on an online booking service called Go Checkin, which is more evidence for why Google’s going through this effort.

I followed up with the salon and reached a person, but she said she didn’t answer any automated call, and then gave me slightly different pricing than I received via email. When I then googled that business name with “kids manicure pricing,” I got an AI Overview result that exactly matched the results it emailed me … but from an identically named salon in Michigan.

What businesses can do better

Auto repair shops and nail salons are automatically opted in to this experiment, but can opt out via their Google Business Profile settings. Some folks have already panned this whole concept and called for it to get immediately shit-canned, arguing it could lead to commoditizing local markets by creating a race to the bottom on pricing while distancing companies from customers.

However, I tend to agree there’s a problem to be solved here. I also think that opting out because these calls might be annoying is the wrong way to think about what’s happening here.

While “Ask for me” is just a test at the moment, more and more AI interactions are inevitable. AI agents like OpenAI’s Operator are already crawling and interacting with websites, pulling information from everywhere you appear online, and filtering it back to potential customers. The only way to truly opt out of having AI be an intermediary between you and your customers is to get off the internet entirely.

Instead, I believe Google only needs to do this because so many small businesses struggle with the basics of digital marketing, i.e. having a website, keeping it updated, and maintaining the primary listings elsewhere online like their Google Business Profile. This technology is trying to bridge the online and offline worlds, using AI to verbally extract the information through a phone call with a person.

If we need all these highly paid engineers spending years to develop fancy technology just to do that, that’s just proof that small businesses need to do a better job making it easier for real people to get this information themselves.

Knowing that, there are at least two simple next steps that you should take to prepare your business, while also proactively providing a better experience for your customers.

1. Publish all your services, pricing, hours, etc., and prioritize maintaining it.

A lot of businesses simply don’t bother updating their website or Google Business Profile when they add new services or temporarily modify their hours of operation. Some choose not to publish their prices, either because they think it’ll scare away customers or help competitors. I believe that lacking transparency hurts businesses more than anything, and this is a particularly clear example where those businesses that make this information easy for both people and robots to find will get more visibility.

If you’ve already done that, great! Now, just make it a priority to consistently maintain your website and directory listings like you would the signs inside or outside of your store. Lots of businesses update their sites at some point and then don’t think about them again until a customer points out the information is incorrect. If that happens, you can bet there were many more customers who were annoyed but didn’t say anything.

(And if you think I’m exaggerating, I just updated a website that still had COVID guidelines at the top of their website, and vacation dates from the prior year at the bottom. Another business I worked with had a 6-month-old message on their voicemail saying they were on vacation. Another had moved locations years prior but still had their old address on Yelp, causing new clients to sometimes go to the wrong place. You get the point.)

Don’t fall behind on this - make it part of your standard operating procedure. If you and your team are already swamped, we offer a very reasonable monthly marketing retainer for exactly this purpose.

2. Make sure your customer-facing staff is aware of what’s coming

When Google first rolled out this technology for restaurants, a lot of businesses didn’t answer or immediately hung up. “I don’t have time for spam calls,” a bartender told a reporter from The Verge in 2019, not realizing the reporter had placed the call using Google Assistant to make a reservation.

I had a similar experience using Local Service Ads, another Google advertising tool. These ads make a business profile appear at the very top of results, with a banner saying “Google Screened,” and a phone number someone can tap to call. When the business answers the phone, a voice announces it’s from Google before it connects the call to the customer.

Well, the first time I set these up for a client, the receptionist hung up as soon as she heard “Google.” It was only after I followed up that I realized no one had told the people answering the phones what to expect, and they get spammed so often that their reflex was to hang up.

Now that you’ve read this far, you’re at least more aware than most businesses that both Google and other technology firms will likely start calling on behalf of legitimate customers. You should also make your staff aware that this might happen so they can at least identify if it’s a real service before instinctively dismissing it. If it’s an AI call asking for information, they should record the questions and double-check that information is available and accurate online as well. If it’s not, add it or update it, because there are probably more customers who want to know the same thing.

This will undoubtedly require patience and training. I also get countless calls from nefarious robo-callers masquerading as if they’re from Google, scaring businesses into thinking there’s something wrong with their Google Business Profiles. This has confused several of my clients, so I’m sure it’s bewildering to the less technologically savvy.

Understanding the difference won’t be obvious for everyone, so at least talk to your staff about it so they understand that an AI voice might not be automatically spam in this brave new world.