Voice-Enabled Workflows (and Why Your Workforce Needs Them) Part One: Team Effectiveness

The enterprise mobile workforce tends to be woefully underserved in Digital Transformations, because many use cases are challenging to solve with traditional enterprise tech. Mobile workers are frontline operators, performing tasks in a heads-up and often hands-free manner in guest- and customer-facing transportation, manufacturing, and field service roles. They need real-time communication among co-workers, centralized dispatch, and they need to make decisions informed by data in your business systems.

Voice workflows fulfill this need uniquely. Voice workflows are AI-enabled automations that utilize real-time voice services and wearable technologies. They can be activated by a voice message or create a voice alert. Your worker will not need to unlock phones, look at screens, tap out lengthy emails, hunt for information, or navigate an interface.

Equipping mobile workers with voice workflows increases productivity, helping your teams get more done daily. Voice workflows also ensure efficiency, compliance, and safety.

Here are 10 AI-enabled workflows that Orion customers use to enhance their teams’ abilities. Each is activated by just a few words spoken into an Orion-equipped device.

1. Keep your teams in sync with Language Translation

Leading-edge enterprise teams often have team members who speak a blend of languages. The maintenance team might communicate best in one language, while management speaks another. Traditionally, language barriers in the workplace created uncertainty, and teams relied on bilingual interpreters for clarity.

With Orion Language Translation, team members can instantly translate among dozens of languages within their team communications platform, utilizing everyday mobile devices. Enable your teams to communicate in the language they understand best. Best of all, your staff can remain heads up and engaged with customers and co-workers.

You’ll love Language Translation because you’ll finally be able to get everyone collaborating seamlessly. You won’t need to worry about language barriers. If you have something to say, you’ll be able to communicate it to everyone.

2. Query your enterprise datastore

Big data is useful only if the exact bits of it your workers need at are immediately accessible in the moment.

A modern business has an enormous store of real-time information, meticulously compiled at great expense in enterprise data management systems. Yet for the average mobile or deskless worker, this information is difficult to access easily and in real time, requiring them to leave their post to find a computer. Does your team need to know if a shipment has arrived, the location of an item, the availability of a room, or the wait time for a guest?

Workflows for enterprise data allow staff to ask for vital information via voice through their Orion-equipped devices and receive answers with the most up-to-date information in milliseconds. Essential information will flow to your team through the Orion Voice Platform without interrupting mission-critical activities.

Why will you love using voice queries? Once you connect your data stores to a voice interface, you’ll finally be able to integrate big data into even the smallest of worker tasks and guest interactions.

3. Connect mobile and field teams with office workers

Companies aren’t organized solely by geography: they’re also divided by the tools they use. Workers in conference rooms use video conference tools like Zoom to collaborate, while those at desks use tools like Slack or Skype. A worker in the field might use a land mobile radio or rugged phone with push-to-talk functionality. A frontline worker won’t want to have to pull a device out of their pocket at all — customers and guests might interpret the behavior as disrespectful or distracted. Handling a mobile device can also be dangerous for a driver or manufacturing site worker.

Using Orion’s productivity-focused workflows and integrations, your team can collaborate across all functions, communicating across platforms and contexts.

Productivity workflows are simple: turn written messages into spoken alerts, and transcribe push-to-talk voice messages into text or chat updates. Integrate your mobile workforce’s voice activity with the tools that other teams already use at their desks.

You’ll love productivity workflows because they open new lines of communication between the office and the field. Eliminate barriers between teams, enabling employees to get the information they need, when they need it, from each other.

4. Reach every team member simultaneously with a single voice message

When using Orion, your team will often be divided into functional groups, meaning that people with one function won’t need to hear the activity of another.

For example, for a hospitality organization like Belle Haven Country Club in Virginia, communications are split up among Food and Beverage, Fitness, and Maintenance teams. For most daily activities, separating teams by function reduces distraction and increases productivity. However, management will occasionally need to reach everyone in an organization at once. That’s where Orion’s All Call Workflow comes in. Activate this, and your message will be transmitted to all active users.

Read the Belle Haven Country Club case study for more details about how they use All Call Workflow.

You’ll love All Call Workflow because it’ll enable you to alert your whole team instantly, summoning every team member without friction.

Learn more about Orion AI Workflows, Automation, and Voice Alerts

Curious about how Orion AI Workflows can fit into your business?

Voice-driven workflows increase team effectiveness by reducing friction between teams and their tools or business systems. Learn more by visiting our AI Workflows page or explore ideas with our Solutions Team by emailing hello@orionlabs.io.

Next week, we’ll publish Part 2: Workflows Compliance and Standard Operating Procedures.

Originally published at https://www.orionlabs.io on July 23, 2019.