GAL VERED: Hello, everyone, and thank you
for joining this session focused on making business calls safer
and more effective with verified calls.
My name is Gal.
I'm a product manager at Google, and I'm
joined by my teammate Stephen, who leads our partnerships.
Let me kick things off by sharing a personal story.
Last month, my bank tried to call me several times
about the potential fraudulent activity on my account.
But to be honest, I just missed those
calls in the sea of spam calls that I receive every day, I
only realized that something was wrong after a week when
I tried to use my credit card and it declined.
Now, luckily, I had a spare card,
so no big damage was done.
But you can imagine how stressful the situation
might have been with slightly different circumstances.
And this story puts the spotlight
on the importance of effective communication
over the phone between businesses and consumers.
So today, I'll start off by sharing a pain point
we identified in those communications
and how we went about developing a solution around it.
And then I'll turn it to Stephen,
in who will explain how we work with leading partners
in order to solve these few pain points to as many users
and as many businesses as we can.
When we look at the data, we see that the average person
receives 30 spam calls each month.
And over 2019, there was a sizable increase
in phone calls.
The vast majority of businesses feel
outbound calls are important for them to meet their customer
service calls.
But here's the problem.
Like me, most consumers simply don't answer their phone
if they don't recognize the number.
So there is a massive gap in the perceived importance of calls
and their actual effectiveness, which is low
because people don't answer.
So how did we reach this stage?
Today, any device that is connected to the internet
is capable of making voice calls through VOIP.
This means that the good old caller ID
system which displays the caller [INAUDIBLE] number
can be spoofed very easily.
There's no trust in the system.
So in practice, a person that sits
in the other side of the world can make a call to my phone,
and it will look like--
as similar as a call from my local bank number.
So why would consumers trust phone calls anymore?
This brings us to verified calls.
Being helpful and provide a trust experience for users
is at core with what we do at Google.
And on the left of the screen, you
can see how a business call looks today.
At best, it's an unidentified call--
nothing personal.
It's just a phone number.
It doesn't mean anything to the user.
And it looks very similar to a spam call I receive
or the bank call I missed.
They look exactly the same.
Next you'll see how verified calls look like.
[RINGTONE]
So let's walk through the experience.
On the top, we've got a blue badge with a verified checkmark
and we also display the name and logo of the brand,
so the user can know who's calling.
Finally, we allow the user to state the reason for calling.
And think-- just think about how wonderful
it would have been if my bank could show,
hey, this is me calling.
And this is the reason, about the potential fraud
in your account.
I would obviously pick this phone call up in a second.
And as you can see, we included all of the information
that consumers value in order to make sure we set the call up
for an engaging and productive communication between the two
sides.
So we call this product Verified Calls.
So I want to you walk you through what verified means.
For one, it signals that the business has passed
Google's verification process.
It also validates that the call is coming
for a the number is showing.
In other words, it's not spoofed.
And finally, it gives the user the information
they need, including the reason for calling,
so they can make an informed decision.
Let me walk you through the verification process.
We use an out-of-band channel to verify the calls,
meaning that the phone call still
goes through regular channels without any change,
and the verification is done separately through an API.
And to make it even easier for brands to join,
we work with selected telephony providers to integrate the API
and perform the verification, and this minimize the friction
for brands to join.
The first step is to query the API for reachability data,
and make sure the phone number can deliver a Verified Calls
experience.
Once this is done, the next step is
to send Google the brand phone number, the consumer phone
number, and the call reason, and Google syncs this information
with the device.
And once the voice call arrives, the user
will see the Verified Calls UI.
And now I'm excited to share with you our demo, which
you can see how easy it is to get your calls verified.
To verify a call, the first step is
to check if the phone number is reachable.
As you can see, I received a response
that the device is indeed reachable.
So I can continue to the next step
and send the verified call's information.
Since I received a 200 response from the server,
I know my data was saved, and I can go ahead
and make a regular phone call.
And the phone call will be verified.
[RINGTONE]
Without going into too many details,
I'll just say that our services are
powered by the great infrastructure of Google Cloud.
And I will end my section by mentioning
that we have designed this API with our users' privacy
in mind, and Google removes any personal information
after the verification is complete.
Now, I am happy to turn this over
to Steve, that will show you how we are partnering
with businesses and share their tremendous interest we've seen.
STEPHEN BROUGH: Thanks, Gal.
As you recall from the beginning of the presentation,
87% of consumers don't answer calls from unknown numbers.
This is particularly a problem for urgent calls,
like Gal's case with his bank.
By verifying the caller with the logo and other details
like call reason, our research shows
we can make calls more trustworthy,
communicate the relevance to the user,
and ultimately improve answering.
For the launch of Verified Calls,
Google has partnered with leading providers,
like the ones on this page, to make
calls more trustworthy and relevant for consumers.
For the latest on all partners supporting Verified Calls,
please visit the website below.
Our focus on making business to consumer communications more
trustworthy and engaging doesn't stop at voice calls.
Back in December 2019, we publicly launched Verified SMS.
Similar to how Verified Calls enhances calling experiences,
Verified SMS makes business SMS messaging
safer and more trustworthy by adding sender verification
and brand.
Many brands, like 1-800-Flowers, Kayak,
and Google Pay are already sending messages
with verified SMS, which is live across nine
countries, including the US and Canada in North America, Brazil
and Mexico in South America, UK, Spain, and France in Europe,
and India and the Philippines in Asia.
And we have more countries planned in 2020.
For more information on this service,
please visit the link below.
When we started down this path of creating both Verified SMS
and Verified Calls we expected verified communications
to be valuable to both businesses and users.
In a recent user sentiment survey in the US
and in Brazil for verified SMS, we
tested this assumption and the feedback
was overwhelmingly positive.
In that same survey, we were both positively surprised
to see how strong user sentiment was across the customer
lifecycle, particularly areas that influenced new and repeat
business, like business consideration,
likelihood to purchase, and likelihood to recommend.
While we haven't conducted the same user sentiment
survey for Verified Calls given how new it is,
anecdotal evidence from partner discussions
give us confidence that sentiment will be equally
strong for this service, too.
Verified Calls is first available in these five
countries--
US, Mexico and Brazil in the Americas, Spain in Europe,
and India in Asia, with more countries planned in 2020.
The Google Phone app and Verified Calls
comes preloaded on many Android devices in these markets,
including ones from Motorola, Nokia, Xiaomi,
OnePlus, and, of course, Pixel.
However, if you don't already have the Google Phone
app on your Android phone, that's OK.
Coming soon, you'll be able to download it
from the Play Store.
For partners and businesses wanting
to take advantage of Verified Calls,
it's simple to get started.
Just register your interest in the website,
or email us directly for more information.
Thank you for joining Gal and i today
to hear how Verified Calls makes business calls safer and more
purposeful.
Have a great day.