This summer, the first new customer many U.S. business owners hear from may not be a customer at all. It may be Google AI, calling on someone’s behalf.
At its developer conference on May 19, Google confirmed that for categories like home repair, beauty, and pet care, people can ask it to call businesses on their behalf to gather pricing and availability, with the feature rolling out across the U.S. this summer. Canadian availability is expected sometime in 2026.
For a lot of small businesses, it changes who they are talking to before they ever speak to a human.
How the call happens
From the customer’s side, it takes about a minute. They search something like “roofer near me,” choose the option to have AI check pricing, answer a few short questions about what they need and when, and pick whether to get the results by text or email. Google’s assistant then calls the relevant businesses, asks about price and availability, and sends back a consolidated summary, usually within about 30 minutes.
The feature is not brand new. It first rolled out in early 2025 for categories like auto shops and nail salons; the summer expansion brings it to home services.
Two details matter for owners. The assistant only contacts businesses that already appear in local search results for that query and match the customer’s stated criteria, like location, service, and timing. And the AI identifies itself as an automated system calling on a customer’s behalf, with the calls monitored and recorded.
For Liam Lytton, founder of Vancouver search agency The 66th, which advises businesses on getting found across Google and the AI models, the gadgetry matters less than who the first conversation is now with.
“For a long time the first contact was a human who could be won over,” said Lytton. “Now it might be software running down a checklist. It is not charmed by a friendly receptionist, but writes down whether you answered, what you quoted, and how fast, and it moves on.”
The ones who never get the call
The problem, Lytton says, is the businesses that are never dialed at all. The assistant pulls from the businesses already showing up in local results, so a shop that is hard for the systems to read can sit out the whole exchange.
“If your business is not clearly listed, with your services and your area spelled out in plain language the systems can actually read, you are not in the pool they call from. The customer never even learns you exist,” added Lytton
Two things have to go right. First, you have to be in the pool the AI draws from at all, and that pool is narrow. A 2026 study of more than 350,000 business locations found only about 1.2% of local businesses ever get recommended by AI search. Being easy for the systems to find, with a complete and current business profile, is what gets you into the running.
Second, once the AI does call, how you answer decides the outcome. Give a real price range rather than a runaround, and answer fast. Vague replies or gatekeeping, like saying you would have to check with the owner, get noted in the summary the customer sees, and you lose the comparison to whoever just gave a straight number.
A standardized shootout
Google frames the feature as a convenience, giving customers live, accurate quotes instead of stale prices pulled off a website. Businesses are not forced into it: owners who do not want automated calls can change their Business Profile settings or tell Google over the phone.
Others who work with small businesses see a trade-off. The old sales call let an owner ask questions, read the person, and build a little trust. In an AI-mediated call, that dynamic disappears, and a business is instead compared in a standardized way against everyone else in its market, on the handful of things the assistant decided to ask. The shortlist is partly built before a human is ever involved. And while customers see the summary they get back, a business that was skipped or marked down usually has no way to know why.
What owners can do before the call comes
For Canadian owners, the U.S. rollout is a preview with a little lead time, since the feature is live in the States now and expected north of the border later this year.
“Stop treating the phone as separate from how they show up online. The profile, the website, the reviews, the way you answer the phone, it is all one thing now,” said Lytton said. “It is the difference between being in the answer the customer gets and not being in it at all.”
