Google Duplex Represents the “Advent of an Appointment-Driven Economy”
AI’s new role in booking takes customer-business interaction to a new level
BOSTON, MA – May 11, 2018 – TimeTrade, the leader in omni-channel Intelligent Appointment Scheduling™, today pointed to the recently unveiled Google Duplex as the “advent of an appointment-driven economy” – an entirely new way to let customers discover and book personalized appointments and classes with leading businesses.
In his keynote at the Google I/O 2018 Conference in Mountain View on Tuesday, CEO Sundar Pichai ran a demo of Google Assistant that stunned the audience by making an actual phone call and booking a hair appointment with a human receptionist using a digital voice powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
The demo featured a new Google Assistant feature – called Google Duplex – that the company will launch on a limited basis this summer.
Google’s newest technology represents the latest – perhaps most ambitious – push to take AI to the next level of scheduling. Over the past year, TimeTrade has been working with Google as it launched the “Reserve with Google” program to let consumers make appointments with businesses right in the Google Maps search window.
Gary Ambrosino, CEO of TimeTrade, issued the following statement in response to intelligent appointment scheduling serving as the use case for Sundar Pichai’s demo of the new Google Duplex feature:
“This is a crossing-the-Rubicon moment. Incorporating Duplex within Google Assistant means self-service scheduling is going to the next level, bringing appointment booking into the mainstream. The idea that you can schedule an appointment and book something is fast becoming an indigenous part of the search process. Duplex reinforces the new reality that intelligent appointment scheduling is – like Google itself – about more than just search. It is a seminal part of conducting commerce in today’s economy.
Make no mistake: Intelligent appointment scheduling is a hot category: that’s the business we’re in. Google has now shown us a very powerful on-ramp, more than search alone, to get the appointments we need to run our lives efficiently. This is a new era – the era of intelligent appointment scheduling.”
About TimeTrade
TimeTrade helps leading brands optimize engagement through all phases of the customer relationship. TimeTrade’s intelligent appointment scheduling platform harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to improve meeting scheduling strategies through real-time customer insights and actions, producing better meetings and higher growth businesses, with TimeTrade customers outpacing their peers by nearly 3X. Tens of thousands of businesses – including leading global banks, retailers, and software companies – use TimeTrade’s Appointments-as-a-Service platform to deliver the personalized attention expected by today’s on-demand consumers.