by Janus Boye
Jake DiMare on stage in Aarhus, Denmark at a past Boye conference. Photo: Ib Sørensen
The voice story still has three leading roles: Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Bixby, but according to Jake DiMare at Voicify, the plot is quickly expanding to include so much more.
The early voice app wave laid the groundwork with relatively simple brand experiences deployed in walled-garden ecosystems. Now, brands imagine far more valuable conversational experiences driven by domain-trained AI, custom voices, deeper integration, and a familiar build once/deploy anywhere strategy.
In a recent member conference call, Jake DiMare shared a few examples demonstrating how yesterday's voice apps are becoming tomorrow's conversational custom assistants and unpack what's driving these changes.
Below you’ll find my notes from the call coupled with insights from his presentation and recent work. At the end you can download the slides and even view the recording from the call.
Let’s start at the beginning and look at how voice is being used today.
Where’s voice experiences today?
Jake actually opened the call, with taking one step further back and asking: Why voice?
In his answer he referred to the adoption of voice which continues to experience explosive growth. This provides brands and organisations of any type with a natural, always online means to connect with customers through 26 billion smart devices. Today, 100 million homes in the US alone has one or more in-home smart speakers (Amazon Alexa or Google Home), and according to recent research, many of them are in active daily use.
Jake also asked: Why Now? To answer he brought some impressive stats on the growing and widespread adoption of voice
This is also driving a voicification of websites, so that users can navigate simply using voice. Still, according to Jake, asking just 1 question is still the most common use case for these devices. That could be asking for the weather in Brooklyn, opening hours for a restaurant or simple trivia. Also, Jake mentioned that less than 1% of all Alexa skills use Amazon Pay. Actually, if you look at the top apps on Alexa, you’ll find that they pretty much fall in three categories:
Meditation tools
Gags (to make kids laugh)
Party games
This mistakenly makes some enterprise brands think voice is not something for them. As Jake said, there are still many first mover advantages in many different areas of opportunity. Use cases for voice have already entered a new wave of deepening complexity, also moving beyond smart speakers. Let’s look closer at that.
Smart speakers are only part of the story
Beyond smart speakers like those from Amazon and Google, there’s also Siri used in Apple smartphones, Bixby which comes as a part of Samsung phones and then there’s Cortana, the Windows speech platform.
In-car voice assistants is just one great emerging example of the voice technology in action. Still, what’s missing today is branded voice apps that create real business value and meaningful customer experience.
To be fair, building voice assistants from the ground up is a complex and costly engineering challenge. Deploying across various voice channels increases the difficulty. Once live, like all digital experiences, voice needs ongoing maintenance at the level of content, conversation design, and code.
There is also potential legislation on the horizon, which is likely to drive adoption even further. A custom voice assistant is not simply a screen reader, as it allows you to interact with the website effectively making websites and apps even more accessible.
Enough said, tell me some interesting case studies, please.
Who’s doing interesting things with voice apps?
Jake brought quite a few interesting examples to the member call. Have a look in the slides (link toward the end) for all of them, but here I’ll just share four starting with automobile giant Volkswagen, which is just one Voicify customer that are using their Conversation Experience Platform to create and manage conversations.
Specifically, the Volkswagen We Connect ID. App allows drivers to query vehicle status with a mobile voice assistant that helps drivers find charging stations nearby, view the charging state, ask for the vehicle’s last parked location and more. A key improvement using Voicify for Voice AI Solutions Architect Sanket Shinde at Volkswagen is the reduced development cycles.
One example of a branded voice experience is offered by Wild Turkey, the famous brand of Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. They wanted to make it more personal and authentic, so they offer The Wild Turkey Tasting, with Master Distillers Jimmy and Eddie Russell and appearances by famous actor Matthew McConaughey, which takes users on a guided tasting of five of Wild Turkey’s boldest whiskies.
One of the additional case studies you can find in the slides is from Merrell - a division of Wolverine Worldwide, one of the world’s leading marketers and licensors of branded casual, active lifestyle, work, outdoor sport, athletic, children's and uniform footwear and apparel.
If you are arriving in allergy season, you might be familiar with Zyrtec, the famous antihistamine used to treat allergic reaction. The Zyrtec AllergyCast voice experience is available on any Alexa or Google Assistant enabled device. Once opened, users can ask questions and hear the ‘real-feel’ forecast on weather, pollen count and predominant allergens based on their location.
The final one I’ll share in this post, is actually from higher education. Hamilton College is a private liberal arts college in Clinton, New York and The Hamilton College voice assistant provides newly accepted students with an exciting, uniquely accessible way to learn about Admissions, Academics, Campus Life, and the history of the school from current students and faculty.
Learn more about making your next move with voice
Jake recently wrote two interesting pieces on the topic, both aimed at getting you on top of the latest trend in voice experiences:
Examining the Core Components of an Effective Voice Strategy
Inside Custom Voice Assistants (a 6-page trend report, PDF).
You can also download the slides from the call (PDF) and finally, you can lean back and enjoy the entire 28-minute recording below.