63336, of course, gets asked questions all the time.
There are two questions that we staff members get asked time and again, though, when we describe our work. Most people only ask one or the other:
“How do you answer questions, then?”
or
“Why would I want to use 63336, when I have Google on my phone already?”
Perhaps surprisingly, the answers to these two questions lead to the same place. We do use Google, and other search engines – not as the first place we look when researching a question, and not usually as the last place, either. Search engines provide facts: they don’t answer questions.
Often that might seem a subtle distinction, but it’s an important one. With some of our questions, it’s not even subtle. If a customer types “Should I leave my husband?” into a search engine, she’ll get a number of agony aunt columns & advice websites attempting to answer that question for specific individuals and situations – which don’t include the customer, or her situation. If she texts us the same question, we have access not only to some fairly smart and sympathetic researchers, but also to all of her “question history” – the other questions she’s asked 63336, which often give us more than enough info to offer her an educated and well-balanced recommendation.
Sometimes search engines are wrong, or at least misleading, too. One recent survey indicated that most people who use Google don’t realise that the top three links on a search results page – the ones Google calls, in rather small, pale text, “Sponsored Links” – are advertising, rather than the actual search results. You get what you pay for. Google needs ads, to make a profit, even if those ads compromise its usefulness. If you text 63336, you’re paying for impartial fact; we don’t take money to promote certain businesses or services over others in our answers.
What happens when your search engine results contradict each other? If you want the true facts behind global warming, a search for either “global”, “warming”, and “facts”, or “global” “warming”, and “truth” gets you (if you know to scroll past the usual “sponsored links”) a mixture of pages that fully support the global warming hypothesis, and pages that supposedly refute it, as well as news items about the current scandal rocking the subject. The “facts” search term gets you 9 sites that accept global warming, and only one anti-global warming one; but for the “truth” search term, the proportions are very nearly reversed. There are a lot of opinionated and even biased sites out there on the web, and search engines don’t usually make a distinction between which ones are accurate and which aren’t.
That’s only on the first page of the search engine results, too. It’s not unusual for us to find the right answer ten or more pages in. Ideally we’ll work out what search terms to use to bring the result we want onto the first page, but sometimes that’s not possible, and the more old-fashioned research approach, of just sifting through dozens and dozens of possible results, is the only one that works.
There are two advantages we have over every search engine.
The first is our lean, mean powerhouse of a database, all algorithms and answers, regularly improved and updated. We’ve answered over 20 million questions so far, and they’re all in the database, ordered and searchable, ready to be picked out, altered if necessary, and re-used. Most of the time, there’s already a database answer that we can use, either just as it is, or tweaked and updated. There’s also the customer’s question history, as mentioned earlier, to give us context for each and every question.
We don’t automate our answers, though. Our other advantage is our staff. There is still a human involved, selecting the best answer, making sure it’s still accurate, and tailoring it to the customer, or completely re-writing it if necessary. Most of our staff have degrees, & many have postgraduate qualifications, so when we get a tricky or technical question, we can usually do a lot better than just re-wording the closest vaguely relevant Wikipedia article. In some ways, Wikipedia is more reliable than most search engines are, though several studies indicate that its accuracy falls down considerably on highly technical subjects, and even its own management recognise that it suffers from systemic bias. 63336 researchers probably suffer from some systemic bias, too, but it’s a British cultural bias that’s actually pretty handy for answering questions from fellow Brits.
If there’s no answer in the database, there’s quite often no answer online, anywhere, anyway. Still, most of our researchers are exactly the kind of quick-witted polymaths you really don’t want to be up against in a pub quiz. If I don’t have a rough idea of the answer to a question, I probably have a book that covers it, somewhere in my house; if I don’t, then another researcher probably does. It’s a little old-fashioned, in these days of eReaders, but sometimes the best way to store and refer to a couple of thousand reference books is a load of bookshelves and a sharp mind. Likewise, if there is an answer available online, our researchers usually have a good idea of which sites to look at directly to get the answer, rather than going via a search engine.
So — why use us when you could just Google it on your phone? Maybe you shouldn’t. If you enjoy using Google, for fun, and get a deep satisfaction out of answering questions, and can do so quickly enough to impress your friends, as well as assessing your search engine’s results and spotting all the times when they’re just plain wrong, and then further wow your friends by picking up the most interesting snippet of fun or entertaining info on whichever website you found… well, maybe you should come and work for us.
If sometimes, though, you get frustrated that Google isn’t enough, or isn’t accurate enough; or if sometimes you just want the sheer luxury of having a minion scurry off to answer your question for you while you concentrate on your pint; or if you’ve tried us before and know that we don’t just give you raw data but an entertaining and accurate answer; or if you need an answer that computers aren’t good at, like “what is the meaning of life” or “what should I say to the cute platinum blonde making eyes at me across the bar” – well, you have our number.
