CallJoy, a virtual customer service phone agent launched earlier this year by Google’s in-house incubator, could prove a boon for small businesses when it begins rolling out to the public.
The service is capable of performing a number of automated processes, including blocking spammers, answering calls, providing callers with basic business information, and redirecting other requests, such as appointment booking or to-go orders, to SMS.
Last week, CallJoy introduced its first major update to enable the service to have more of a conversation with the customer by asking questions and providing more information, among other improvements.
Initially, CallJoy could only provide customers with information like the business hours or the address, or could ask the customer for permission to send them a link over text message to help them with their request. With the update, CallJoy’s phone agent can answer questions more intelligently.
The interaction with the customer begins with CallJoy asking, “Can I help you?” to which the customer responds. Based on this response, the service offers more relevant information. For example, if a caller asked a restaurant if they had any vegetarian options, CallJoy would respond, “Yes! Our menu has vegetarian and vegan-friendly choices. Can I text you the link to our online menu?”
This isn’t all done through some magical AI, however. Instead, the business owner has to feed-in the sort of customer inquiries it wants CallJoy to be able to respond to and handle. While some, like vegetarian options, may be common inquiries, it can be hard to remember everything that customers ask. That is where CallJoy analytics help.
The service already gathers call data — like phone numbers, audio and call transcripts — into an online dashboard for further analysis. Business owners can tag calls and run reports to get a better understanding of their call volume, peak call times and what people wanted to know. This information can be used to better staff their phone lines during busy times or to update their website or business listings, for example. And now, it can help the business owner understand what sort of inquiries it should train the CallJoy phone agent on, too.
Once trained, the agent can speak an answer, send a link to the customer’s phone with the information or offer to connect the caller to the business’ phone number to reach a real person. While CallJoy offers a virtual phone number, like Google Voice, it can also ring a “real” phone line as needed to get a person on the line.
The latest update offers businesses even more flexibility. Some business owners may prefer to answer the phone themselves and speak to their customers directly, for example. But they could still take advantage of a service like this at other times — like after hours or when they are too busy to answer. The updated version now allows them to program when CallJoy will answer, including by times of day, or after the phone rings a certain number of times, for example. The business owner will also receive a daily email recap of everything CallJoy did, so they know how and when it was put to use.
The product is mainly aimed at small business owners who cannot afford the more expensive customer service phone agent systems. Instead, it is priced at a flat $39 per month.
A spokesperson for CallJoy says the service has signed up “thousands” of small businesses since its initially invite-only launch in May 2019.
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