Google wants to turn Hangouts into a customer service platform

Apple has an army of Geniuses that you can get in touch with whenever you need help deciding whether or not to buy and Apple product and which ones you should buy. Google, on the other hand, has so such army despite being a direct competitor to Apple in many areas. However, that’s all going to change once Google finishes testing its new service that uses Hangouts to connect you with other people who’re willing to answer your questions. 

In 2013, Google expanded its Hangouts video conferencing service into a commerce platform called Helpouts, where people buy and sell services like cooking or technical advice via live video. Now Google has developed another new service based on its Hangouts infrastructure. It is running a live video chat service for would-be buyers of Google smartphones, tablets and Chromebooks (but not Nest products) to ask Google Device Experts questions and chat about the products before sealing the deal. We were tipped off to the service by some of the people working on the project, and Google has confirmed some of the details. “We’re always improving features to help our users,” said a spokesperson. “We’re in a limited trial of an experimental support feature and gathering feedback, so we aren’t ready to share full plans yet.”