Technology continues its rapid advancement in our professional and personal lives. From machine learning and artificial intelligence to automation of our banking, shopping and driving, the digital revolution moves higher in its levels of sophistication and application.
Voice technology and voice commerce are among the beneficiaries of these changes. Voice technology gives users the power to convert verbal language into commands directions. It does this by leveraging reams of AI metadata into voice-assisted devices like home or office automated assistants, voice commerce tools, smart speakers, and chatbots.
It’s clear that the global voice recognition tech market is here now, with a promising future ahead. Future revenues from voice technologies are anticipated to grow to nearly $30 billion by 2026, from about $10 billion in 2020. eMarketer notes that about 47% of US adults will use a voice assistant in 2022, growing higher by 2025. Plus, conversational AI is likely to become more mainstream in practically every vertical industry in the next few years.
As this market continues to grow, the uses will also expand in business, manufacturing and other services platforms. Ultimately, these uses will translate into benefits for both enterprises and consumers.
Here’s a top-line look at five key aspects of voice technology for business this year and beyond.
Wider adoption of voice technology will undoubtedly lead to growing voice commerce opportunities. This happens when customers interact with conversational commerce through a device with a brand, a product offering or a marketing pitch. This is likely to be a key growth area for businesses. Voice recognition is getting smarter every year, and can help facilitate growth in voice-activated online transactions. Blutag helps retailers integrate voice technology into their brands without heavy lifting on their end. While voice commerce today may be focused on getting consumers to try online buying with voice, a new range of voice commerce possibilities may evolve between businesses for B2B transactions in the years ahead.
In the past decade, automated voice systems used by companies have produced large troves of data around customers’ age, location, gender, and more. Voice technology can capture this data, helping businesses get an inside look at key areas like customer research, customer service and lead generation and conversions. For example, conversational AI can be employed to answer customer questions, problems and issues, and help customers with product recommendations and guide them through the sales funnel. Voice technology data helps corporate decision-makers to make better decisions today on using voice AI for live or automated customer interactions.
AI voice technologies can co-exist alongside the work of humans. Automation will make this happen. Overtime, AI software learns to replicate or augment human work. When this occurs, human workers are then freed up to focus on more high-level aspects of their work. Automated voice systems benefit companies by helping increase customer interaction, completing tasks often faster than humans for these repetitive tasks. This results in work that has few manual errors and higher productivity.
Financial services companies, insurance providers, and healthcare platforms are increasingly using voice biometrics as a security tool to prove and confirm a customer’s identity. Voice biometrics analyze certain voice characteristics and match them with other confirming identity data to create a singular voice blueprint for the customer. In 2022 and beyond, voice biometrics will likely be used more frequently by businesses to help deter identity fraud. For example, voice biometrics systems can identify a person’s voice if the person is trying to gain access to multiple accounts. The system will then be able to flag any possible suspicious activity. This area of voice biometrics is expected to grow in the coming years, with an expected valuation of $3.4 billion by 2026.
Voice-automated search is already highly popular with consumers and will continue to rise in popularity. The key reasons are that voice search is fast, intuitive and allows consumers to multitask while searching for goods and services. It also gives them near-instant answers for more specific searches. Voice technology in search essentially is like asking your all-knowledgeable device about anything for a near-human interaction. Obviously, how marketers approach SEO and search algorithms will be altered with the expected larger growth in voice search.
To learn more about how your business can integrate voice technology into your marketing and operations systems, reach out to us at Blutag. We can help you understand the benefits of the technology most applicable to your needs. And then we’ll help build a system that brings your company closer to the future of voice commerce.
