The psychology of voice commerce
Breaking the sound barrier of the next behavioural revolution
Talking vs. Tapping
We’ve been working with the visionary Jon Stine at Intel for the last couple of months, exploring how voice is set to transform consumer behaviour in the same way the internet changed the high street.
I’ve been particularly surprised by the speed of the audio-arms race that Amazon, Apple and Google have been playing over the last few years: and it’s through Jon’s hawkish industry observation that the opportunity has come into focus. We’ve put this article together to start sharing some of the themes that are emerging.
What’s really interesting us is how a ‘voice interface’ changes the way we make decisions. This article, written with Stine, outlines new ways to envision how voice could unlock commercial advantage.
Alexa is the tip of the iceberg.
Voice is poised to transform the way we interact and transact across a range of categories. Much of the current focus is on replenishment for ‘known’ (low risk) product categories, e.g. groceries or commodity purchases.
The play for Amazon is huge and represents a sizeable opportunity: shift consumer behaviour to on-demand ordering for commodity purchases and then switch customers into lower cost Amazon ‘own-brand’ alternatives. Watch out P&G and Unilever.
Voice is to Smartphone, as Mobile is to Desktop
The real opportunity with voice is that it makes more of the day ‘shoppable’. In the shower? No worries. Cooking? No problem. Driving somewhere? No sweat. Much like audio books and podcasts allow us to digest deep, long form content anywhere, voice commerce unlocks all the moments in the day where we can’t, or don’t, hold a smartphone or sit in front of a computer. These can all now become moments where transactions happen as consumer desire arises. We see this is fundamental to the value proposition of voice commerce, beyond mere replenishment.
So how might organisations re-think what voice can mean, not just for replenishment, but for any product category?
Say goodbye to the basket
As the voice giants normalise ‘topping up’ rather than planning ahead, the impact on consumer spend will be significant. As people move to on-demand ordering and fulfilment, we’ll lose the feedback of the shopping basket ‘total spend’ that helps us decide when we’ve spent enough. Instead, we’ll likely see a move to increased consumption: why ration the eggs until the next shop when you can just order more?. We may also see increased average monthly bills as it’s harder to keep track when you “buy-as-you-go”.
Breaking the sound barrier
In the word’s of Stine:
“Issuing a voice command to Alexa and engaging in the purchase of complex product are two entirely different things. The first is what might be termed “robotic Q&A.” Simple requests. Limited answers.
The second, much more difficult. Especially as the commerce discussion demands multiple rounds of clarification (“do you want the pale pink, periwinkle blue, or the light spring meadowgreen?”) to confirm the selection of a multi-attribute product”.
When we move into purchasing products and services that are unfamiliar and/or are perceived to carry ‘risk’ due to complexity or novelty (financial, emotional, social) — the voice interface has some very real drawbacks.
If we ask someone to make a decision about an unfamiliar product category we place a high workload on working memory, it’s tough comparing options or detailed product descriptions and you can’t assess aesthetic features without channel switching.
When we look at the 4 major categories of buyer behaviour (Routine, Impulse, Limited Decision-Making and Extensive Decision-Making) — the current paradigm aligns to Routine only, leaving vast product and service categories out of the mix (clothing, transport, automotive, education, household services etc.).
The speed with which this new channel is adopted will be limited by the speed of innovation in ‘audio user interfaces’
What’s the rush to get everyone using voice?
So why solve this problem? Why not let voice play a niche role? People don’t care what channel they use to complete a task (research, transaction or service). Phone, website, chat bot, voice, SMS, email — it’s irrelevant to the consumer, provided they can access the channel that requires the least effort to complete a goal.
Voice moves human computer interaction into the realms of calm computing — which has some radical advantages in this respect. The move from ‘doing stuff on computers’ to making things happen using our biological hardware and wetware — without the need to physically input or manipulate data — represents a step-change in the effort a customer needs to invest to create an outcome.
In a world that prizes time and fetishizes frictionless commerce, voice takes a step closer to a “think it-have it” world. Brands who can use voice to systematically reduce customer effort will create fresh advantage.
A more human conversation with machines
When you know what’s important in a category, the decision making strategy can be simple — compare options on a single dimension (e.g. price, rating).
However, most of the time we don’t know what dimensions are important, let alone what our preferences are across those dimensions. We improvise our preferences largely in the moment — they are not static, they are context dependent and part of the role a brand plays is helping us quickly formulate what aspects we should use to decide (rightly or wrongly) such as size, weight, volume, value, flavour etc.
The opportunity here for voice is two-fold: help customers define the requirements and attributes that matter to them (‘consultative commerce’ if you will) and secondly help them acquire the solution (the current focus of voice commerce efforts).
3 ways to flip the iceberg
We’ve identified 3 psychological strategies to help voice move from a niche position that satisfies replenishment, through to a more rounded role in supporting any purchase decision across the customer journey.
1. How might we help a person decide what’s important?
Use forced choice questions to reveal preferences and help people define and prioritise the dimensions by which they will compare options. E.g. is softness or size more important? Price or rating? This type of simple, low impact (system 1) decision-making can help the chat agent form a filter to arrive at a simpler subset of options.
2. How might we help them narrow choices?
Imitate the decision-making strategy known as ‘elimination by aspects’ where we choose our most important dimension (e.g. price) and then remove options that don’t meet the specification. We then move to the next most important dimension (as defined by the revealed preferences) and continue to cull options until we are left with 1 or a small subset of options. This could all happen without the users effort or energy but would represent significant time saving.
3. How might we help them channel switch effortlessly, when it’s most appropriate?
When the shortlist is ready, seamlessly hand-off the task to a more suitable channel by shipping the shortlist to the customers smartphone, inbox or TV screen where they can do visual comparison — “Would you like me to send a comparison table to your tablet John?”
