AI agents will clear up your customer complaints, Google claims

Google is releasing AI agents into its Workspace suite, allowing businesses to automate multi-stage tasks such as responding to customer complaints.

Google is calling the new feature Workspace Flows, which are similar in concept to services such as If This Then That (IFTTT). So you can join together different processes to form a continuous workflow. However, Google claims Workspace Flows will be more powerful and easier to create than IFTTT.

“A lot of the work that we do today requires context and reasoning, it’s not just a linear stream of straightforward tasks,” said Kristina Behr, Vice President of Google Workspace, in a briefing ahead of Google’s Cloud Next ’25 conference. “However, traditional automation tools mostly handle simple triggers.”

She added: “With Workspace Flows, we’re democratising the ability to create these workflows. And it’s not just for IT admins or tech experts, it’s for everybody. Simply describe what you need in plain language and workspace flows will design and build sophisticated, logic-driven flows.”

The company uses the example of handling customer complaints. You could set up a Flow that monitors a customer feedback form, with the AI automatically summarising the complaint and deciding whether it’s high priority or not.

A second stage of the Flow could have the AI – which is trained on company procedures and customer support documentation – draft a response to the customer. This is then added to a Gmail Drafts folder for a human staff member to review. The AI pings the staff members when a new, high-priority case needs urgent review, so a serious complaint isn’t left to fester in the outbox.

Other situations where you might use Workspace Flows include making sure marketing copy fits the brand voice or reviewing policy documents, the company claims.

NotebookLM in Docs

The Workspace Flow agents aren’t the only new AI feature coming to Workspace. Keen to build on the success of NotebookLM – the Google service that converts documents into a podcast-like conversation hosted by AI-generated presenters – the company is now building a similar feature into Google Docs.

Audio in Google Docs will give users the option of creating a full audio version of their documents or creating a podcast-style overview of the key highlights. If you need to sharpen your own writing, Google Docs will also include a ‘Help me refine’ feature that will provide “thoughtful suggestions on how to strengthen your argument, improve the structure of your piece, or make your key points clearer”. Our experience with other AI services delivering such a feature haven’t been great, so it will be interesting to see if Google can make it less toe-curling.

Sheets is getting new AI toys too, with the ‘Help me analyze’ function helping to identify trends in your data that you might have missed, or creating charts to show new ways of presenting the data. This is similar to the feature offered by Copilot AI used in Microsoft Excel, which is equally as hit and miss as the feature offering to refine your written documents.

Talking of misses, Google Meet is getting extra AI fairy dust too: meeting attendees can now ask the AI “What did I miss?” if they need to leave a meeting for a few minutes. Google claims it will provide a summary of what was discussed, paying particular attention to any key decisions or action points.

All of these new features will be rolled out over the course of this year, with some entering betas in the coming weeks.

Read next

• What is Google Workspace?
• Zoom Workplace AI aims to turn video calls into true collaboration
• Bubl: a work booth you might actually want to spend time in