The Next Customer Who Rings You Might Be A Machine

Google has rolled out a feature in US Search where a shopper can tap "Let Google call" and an AI, built on Google's Duplex technology, rings local shops to ask about price, availability and current promotions. It identifies itself as an AI at the start of the call, then summarises what the member of staff said and texts or emails the shopper the result. It is live in categories including toys, health and beauty, and electronics.

It is not available in the UK. That is the useful part: there is time to decide how you want to handle it rather than discovering it mid-shift.

What is actually happening here?

Three separate things are converging, and it helps to keep them apart:

• Agents that ask. An AI phones or messages a business to retrieve a fact, such as stock or opening hours, on behalf of a person.
• Agents that buy. Google's agentic checkout lets the assistant complete a purchase once the shopper authorises it, alongside price monitoring.
• Agents that represent you. Google has also announced a Business Agent in Search, meaning a business can be represented by an agent rather than only answering one.

The first is the one that shows up on your phone line without warning. The second changes how transactions reach you. The third is a choice you make later.

Why should a UK business care about a US feature?

Because the underlying requirement travels ahead of the feature. Every one of these agents is trying to obtain the same handful of facts: what you sell, whether it is in stock, what it costs, when you are open, and where you are. A business that cannot answer those questions consistently is already losing enquiries to humans who gave up. The agent simply makes the gap measurable.

There is also a staffing question. A phone call from an AI still occupies a real person for a minute or two. If the answer to "do you have this in stock and what does it cost" exists nowhere except in the head of whoever is on the shop floor, that cost scales with the number of shoppers using the feature, and none of those calls are qualified.

What should we do now?

Nothing dramatic. Five things, all of which pay off regardless of whether the feature ever reaches the UK:

1. Get the basics right where machines read them. Opening hours, address, phone number and service area on your Google Business Profile and your website, matching each other exactly. This is the first place any agent looks, and getting it right removes a share of the calls entirely.
2. Publish prices, or at least ranges. "Contact us for pricing" is a dead end for a machine and increasingly for a person. A range with the variables named is enough.
3. Put stock or lead time somewhere public if you sell physical goods. Even a weekly update beats a phone call.
4. Decide your policy on AI callers now. Will staff answer them, or take the number and call back? Whichever you choose, tell the team before it happens, so the decision is not made at random by whoever picks up.
5. Log them. If AI calls do start arriving, count them. That number is the business case for publishing the data properly, and you will not have it retrospectively.

The honest limitation

This is early. The feature is US-only, category-limited, and no UK rollout has been announced. Anyone selling you an urgent "agentic commerce readiness" project this quarter is ahead of the evidence.

What is not speculative is that the questions these agents ask are the questions your customers already ask, and most small businesses answer them inconsistently across their website, their listings and their phone line. Fixing that is worth doing on its own terms. That it also happens to be preparation is a bonus.