When you call a business with a phone menu, Direct My Call shows you on screen what the automated voice says and what options you have to choose from. Some calls may also show menu options before they’re spoken. Learn how to use Direct My Call.
When you call a business and get put on hold, save time and let Google Assistant wait on hold for you. Google Assistant will notify you when a support representative is ready to speak to you. Learn how to turn on Hold for Me during a call.
To get you the most recent phone menu options, the number that you call may be sent to Google when 'See menu options faster' is on. No identifiers connected to you or your device get sent with the number. To protect your privacy, audio and call details are not sent to Google unless you voluntarily choose to share your audio and transcript after the call is over to help improve Hold for Me or Direct My Call.
When you use Hold for Me, the Phone app records the audio from the business and shows you a transcript of what’s said. When a support representative joins the call, they’ll hear a brief disclosure that the call is being recorded and connected to you. Your phone vibrates, plays a sound and notifies you on your screen that you’ve been taken off hold. When you return to the call, the recording stops.
When you use Direct My Call, the Phone app shows a real-time transcript of any automated messages and menu options. And when you turn on 'Faster menu options' with Direct My Call, some businesses show you menu options before they are spoken.
The 'Faster menu options' setting only works if Google has call data from the business.
After a call, you can choose to share your Hold for Me and Direct My Call data to help Google improve both features. To share your data without any identifiers linked to you, submit your data as a 'Google user'. Humans may review the data to help improve machine learning in Hold for Me and Direct My Call.
If you use Hold for Me or Direct My Call and choose to share your call data with Google, you allow Google to access:
- A recording and transcript of the call from the time that you turn on Hold for Me until you return to the call
- System logs, like diagnostic data
- The business’s phone number
- Greeting and disclosures played on the call
- Hold for Me:
- Australia in English
- Canada in English
- Japan in English and Japanese
- United Kingdom in English
- United States in English
- Direct My Call:
- United Kingdom in English
- United States in English
Audio processing is done on your device and no audio recordings or transcripts are sent to Google, unless you choose to share your call data to help improve the feature.
You can listen to the audio recording and review the transcript before you decide whether to share your call data with Google.
Call data is stored on Google servers for only 180 days. You can delete any recordings that you share with Google at any time. Go to your MyActivity and under ‘Hold for Me' shared audio’ or ‘Direct My Call' shared audio’, click Delete.
If you choose not to share your data, the audio recording and transcript will be deleted from your device 48 hours after the call happened.
Google collects diagnostic data about your interaction with the business phone number. This includes data like whether or not your call was successful and the accuracy of our predictions. None of this information is linked to you or your identifiers.
Turn Hold for Me on or off
Important: Once the setting is on, you also have to turn on Hold for Me with each call to let Google Assistant wait on hold for you. Learn how to turn on Hold for Me during a call.
- Open the Phone app
.
- Tap More
Settings.
- Tap Hold for Me.
- Turn Hold for Me on or off.
Settings.Turn Direct My Call on or off
- Open the Phone app
- At the top right, tap More
- Tap Direct My Call.
- Turn Direct My Call on or off.