The Relevance of Voice Technology for Businesses
It is a well-known fact that voice technology is getting better and better day by day. It has now become an integral part of people’s daily routine by making their life easier. But the main question is how relevant are these voice assistants for businesses, particularly in the Indian subcontinent, and how can they leverage the power of vernacular languages to drive their businesses forward.
A brief history
The history of voice assistants can be traced way back to 1961 when IBM first launched Shoebox, the first digital speech recognition tool. Since then numerous advancements have taken place in the industry which have led to the development of advanced voice assistants like Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, Cortana & Bixby, with which we are most familiar with.
In today’s world, it is not entirely uncommon to see someone talking to their devices. Reminds us of Samantha, doesn’t it? Tasks like changing the room temperature, turning off lights can now easily be done using voice assistants. People find it more comfortable to speak in order to get things done rather than pressing a series of random strokes on a cold surface.
What does it mean for businesses?
The sale of voice assistants has increased exponentially over the past year and it has led to the opening up of a completely new way for businesses to interact with their customers.
Experts believe that the usage of voice assistants will be crucial for businesses in the days to come.
Voice technology can be utilized by businesses not only for their customers but also internally, for themselves. Got a meeting request to send? Ask Google Assistant to do it. Want to get the status of the current sprint? Alexa can help you with that. Dozed off during the Monday morning meeting? Just ask Google Assistant what the key points were! 😅
Businesses are already adapting to the changing trends
Voice technology is not limited to sci-fi movies anymore, forward-thinking brands are already transitioning into the voice technology sector. JP Morgan is using Alexa to provide valuable information like research and analytics to their customers. Capital One fin-corp is helping their customers with banking related stuff using voice assistants.
Not only this but 85% of businesses are willing to use voice technology in the upcoming year. This has given rise to the concept of “Conversational Economy — an ecosystem where voice technology is the driving force.”
Brands will need to align themselves with this change and make voice a key element of their future marketing strategies. Voice user interfaces have rightfully been termed as “Global User Interfaces” by many.
Voice technology is something that comes naturally to everyone and requires no user interface training whatsoever.
This is the main reason why people generally prefer asking Google Assistant to turn the temperature on the thermostat down rather than opening up yet another app and following a string of multiple touches.
What does it mean for the Indian businesses?
Currently, 30% of the searches worldwide are voice-based, and this number is expected to increase up to 50% by 2020. Currently, the majority of the people using voice assistants are English speaking.
But in a country like India, only 10% of the population speaks English, a seemingly big barrier for the entry of voice assistants into the subcontinent.
Recognizing the incredible potential in India, Interspeech — “world’s largest and most comprehensive conference on the science and technology of spoken language processing”, took place in September in India for the first time. The huge potential of voice technology in India was something that all the researchers and experts collectively agreed upon.
All the technology giants, from Baidu to Google, and from Facebook to Microsoft, have acknowledged the importance of regional language support to reach the potential 300 million users. E-commerce giants, such as Amazon and Walmart have realized that to capture the Indian market, targeting 10% of English-speaking Indians is just not enough.
India’s local language audience is the real market to capture! And the race to capture that has already begun. Recently, Flipkart acquired Liv.ai, a start-up that provides speech recognition in all major Indian languages. Big players in voice assistant market like Amazon Alexa & Google Assistant have also launched support for Indic language in their devices. In November, Google went a step further and added support for a number of other regional languages like Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, etc. for the Google Assistant.
Businesses in India can use the combined potential of voice assistants and regional language support to help expand their services to an even bigger audience. Voice technology, in conjunction with other technologies, will truly revolutionize the way in which businesses and customers interact.
Your customers are ready. Are you?
It is high time that businesses start considering voice as an integral part of their marketing as well as operational strategies. Businesses are already taking advantage of voice technology and gaining competitive advantages. In essence, businesses in India need to get ready for the “Conversational Economy” — something that we here at Voiceano can help with.
Voiceano is a conversation design studio that crafts voice strategies and designs conversational interfaces for brands. If you feel that your brand needs a voice, then you should definitely grab a drink with us! 🍻😄
