We have seen how the pandemic has accelerated the development of contactless technology to increase security, while voice technology has also had a push towards growth. Today the change is ongoing and voice interfaces are advancing exponentially in all industries.
Companies are launching their technologies to satisfy and take advantage of the demands of the market that seeks immediacy and personalized attention.
The commitment of voice-centric technology development arises for several reasons, but one of the most influential is the consumer’s increasingly high expectations. Users look for enablers on convenience; where speed, efficiency, and effectiveness must be continually optimized.
On the other hand, a great trigger to undertake the development of voice applications is the massive adoption of intelligent assistants to use in everyday life. Alexa and Siri have opened a research field that intertwines technology with cognitive science. Knowledge of the effects of these conversation devices when interacting with humans has been ground-breaking, generating a trend towards the use of the voice as the protagonist in searches and interaction with digital technologies. Therefore, the reason is obvious, the data that companies can obtain by “listening” to people is an aspect that cannot be ignored.
According to industry experts, it is predicted that in the next 5 years almost all applications will integrate voice technology in one form or another. Therefore, the business world must begin to investigate and take advantage of this technology to better interact with our customers and, why not, with all stakeholders.
Let’s look at some stats from Google:
- 25% of people around the world now use voice search on their mobiles. In 2020, more than half of all smartphone users took advantage of this technology in one way or another.
- 71% of consumers prefer to do a voice search instead of typing.
- One billion voice searches are performed every month.
- 20% of the total number of searches on Google through smartphones are activated through the voice search engine.
The prediction for 2030 is that the market for voice recognition based on artificial intelligence should reach 27.3 billion dollars worldwide. Additionally, purchases made thanks to voice technology may reach 40 billion by 2022.
Keys and opportunities to address voice technology
Voice technology for digital experience personalization
Personalization is crucial to building meaningful customer relationships. The application of Machine Learning (ML) and NPL (Natural Language Processing) together with sentiment analysis will be key to identifying those behaviours and predictions related to the customer’s experience with the company. By identifying qualitative intentions and purposes, brands can generate responses tailored to the consumer.
Behaviours prediction and consumer anticipation through voice
Data analytics and predictive analytics are two trends affecting the IT industry now and into the future. One of the great benefits of voice-based forecasting is that it provides robust data to inform future business decisions.
An opportunity scenario: Currently only 3% of call recordings to customer service centres are analysed. In these recordings, there are a lot of information and impressions of the actual customer experience. 97% of this missing knowledge, such as gender, age, geography, health, emotions, and vitality, is lost because until now audio was difficult to analyze.
As adoption of the technology grows, organizations will need to build a robust predictive network model to support learning from their AI initiatives including voice data.
Including voice in the data analysis processes is key for evolving and strengthening the business intelligence strategy. Therefore, a predictive analysis must necessarily incorporate voice as a source of knowledge in a short time. This will support decision-makers to make decisions backed by data and a more complete picture of consumer experience and impressions.
Smarter branding and advertising
Search in digital media is essential for brand advertising. Personalization of search results or digital media according to customer intent will be empowered as this technology becomes more sophisticated. In the advertising sector, it will be much more assertive to respond to specific consumer inquiries and generate consistent experiences.
Voice advertising will be an opportunity to make brands visible and take advantage of this new approach to the public. Voice-based advertising revenue is estimated to reach $19 billion by 2022. (Juniper Research)
Automation prevails
Voice technology has an important role to play in other technological developments such as robotic process automation, natural language processing, and intelligent document processing, which will gradually continue to reduce their reliance on error-prone processes and free human labour toward tasks, higher-order or strategic.
On the other hand, ASR (Automated speech recognition) systems such as chatbots and voice bots, audio extraction and voice biometrics will be increasingly used to address the customer experience and increase the capabilities of the company.
Voice technology is a natural way for people to easily find what they are looking for in an increasingly connected world. This is here to stay, showing a bright outlook and rapidly evolving. Technologies like AI and NPL would continue to drive these developments. Going forward, voice biometrics and voice recognition will be embedded in digital user experiences.
Innovation in this area will allow companies to generate efficient, automated, intelligent and at the same time close, personalized, and natural initiatives.
