Voice apps: the next evolution of the mobile marketplace
Thursday, 21st February 2019Guest blog by Caroline Canty, Apadmi
Caroline Canty, Communications Manager for Apadmi, considers voice apps and how they’re revolutionising the tech landscape and the concept of “mobile”.
Voice apps provide the same speed and convenience as mobile apps, but in a way that’s completely natural and intuitive. They’re the ideal representation of what Mark Weiser called ‘calm technology’ – tech that users can operate without having to learn how.
A voice app is a piece of software that’s built to work on a voice platform, such as skills for the Amazon Alexa Store. By enabling them for your voice assistants, you can do everything you currently do on your smartphone, but with less physical tasks to perform and without being confined to a specific device, location or activity.
How do you know when you need voice?
Verbal communication is engrained in us. It’s something we like and want to do, so it makes sense that people are warming to their voice assistants. But voice apps don’t fit every scenario – just like mobile apps. They still need to add value to the customer, or they just won’t be used.
The starting point for any company wanting to define a use case for voice should be the question: “What can this new platform provide that nothing else can?”. What problems are customers encountering that could be solved with voice?
There are many reasons to get onto a voice platform – being first to market, an ecommerce channel, engaging with a new sector of customers – but simply getting on it isn’t enough.
Helping businesses find their voice
Mobile apps can tailor search options and send new product notifications, but voice apps can immerse the user in an entirely brand-led world.
There are new releases all the time aimed at improving the user experience of voice. Amazon Polly allows you to swap Alexa for a voice that more closely reflects your brand, while Google’s Wavenet produces better and more realistic-sounding speech than ever before.
And customers appreciate it. A recent survey found that 52% of voice-activated speaker owners would like to receive information about sales and promotions from brands, per Google – reflected in the fact that voice commerce sales are predicted to reach $40 billion by 2022.
Voice personalisation gives brands the chance to develop far richer connections with their customers than the current mobile marketplace can offer too. By entwining voice with AI, they’re able to then learn what that specific user is likely to ask most, how they’re likely to phrase things, how they use the app as part of their daily routine and so on.
Challenges facing adoption
With any new technology comes new challenges. The biggest one currently facing voice is trust – people’s concerns over the devices themselves listening in on conversations, their reputation for being “buggy” and not processing shopping orders correctly, or that the platform itself isn’t secure enough for payments.
Voice platform providers have their work cut out, but the benefits are clear. Voice offers a unique kind of loyalty and an unprecedented level of customer engagement, meaning any product or service can be delivered in the most convenient way.
Voice isn’t just an evolution of the mobile marketplace – it’s a revolution of the mobile concept and what it means to integrate tech into on-the-go lifestyles.
I’ll be at the Trailblazing Technology Conference with Patrick Cavanagh in a few weeks – we’ll be chatting in more depth about voice technology and how, when and where brands should be using it. We hope to see you there!