Beyond Chatbots, Can Voice Deliver?

It’s hardly a secret that consumers are demanding more from chatbots. They want faster, more accurate responses, and an experience that integrates naturally into their lives.

Which is why consumers are making the jump from chatbots to Voice User Interfaces (VUIs); a shift that will impact any industry that has a digital relationship with their customers. Finance, retail, automotive and healthcare will all face increasing demand to implement a VUI offering into their services, and if they don’t, they will lose customers to a competitor who does.

Voice is Now

If the new 2018 report on Conversational Commerce from CapGemini is any indication, consumers are already embracing voice assistants more rapidly than any other emerging technology on the market today. According to the report,

“A majority of consumers (51%) are already users of voice assistants, and interacting with voice assistants”

VUIs have embedded themselves into the very framework of consumers’ lives, and the demand to interact with technology in through voice will only increase as conversational interfaces become more readily available.

Why do Consumers Prefer Voice?

Why would a consumer prefer a VUI to a GUI (graphical user interface)?

According to CapGemini, Convenience (52%) and ability to do things hands free (48%) are the two biggest reasons for preferring voice assistants over mobile apps/websites.

In fact, according to research conducted at Stanford University, humans can perform tasks with voice 3x as quickly as they can by typing on a smartphone.

The significant time savings of VUIs makes a tangible impact in the lives of consumers, relieving them from the burden of clicking tirelessly away at a screen. VUIs present a freedom that hasn’t existed since the dawn of the smartphone, the freedom to simply speak.

Voice Is Happening

According to CapGemini, “Voice assistants will become a dominant mode of consumer interaction in three years”

This statistic often comes as a surprise. For many, the experience of interacting with voice assistants can often feel frustrating, or even fall flat of expectations. But this is changing rapidly.

The old, rules-based approach to chatbots is dying off, giving way to truly remarkable conversational interfaces. VUIs are already faster and more efficient, but when the conversational AI behind a VUI is advanced, the experience is seamless, delightful, and unlike anything consumers have seen before.

“The promise of a Voice UI frees us from manual touch, it’s a third hand when two are busy” andwhen we spend 5 hours per day on our phones, that extra hand is more than just an assistant, it’s a life line.

Implementing Advanced Conversational AI in VUIs

What does a good VUI need to have in order to achieve and maintain adoption? According to CapGemini, “82% of users say fast and accurate replies are the most compelling feature that influences the use of voice assistants”

This may seem straightforward, but creating an AI that delivers an experience in which fast and accurate replies are possible requires advanced Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning Techniques. It mandates an understanding of human language in its most basic form (messy, colloquial, erroneous) which is no easy task for an AI. In fact, it’s incredibly complicated.

There are very few companies today that are doing conversational AI well, and even fewer who have the expertise to scale their solutions. Clinc is one of those companies, one whose executive team is a blend of Professors and PhDs in machine learning and scalable systems mixed with proven leaders in enterprise success and profitability. Clinc is able to use the latest advancements in science and technology to redefine the conversational AI experience and deploy it to millions of users.

An Overwhelming Force

As the chatbot hype cycle continues to diminish, the underlying purpose for conversational interfaces can begin its realization and dissemination into the marketplace.

There is a hunger among consumers for new, extraordinary experiences, and what could be more extraordinary than merging the most natural, human quality (voice) with the most unnatural one (AI)?

As companies like Clinc branch their solution to more enterprises, in more industries, the original promise of Conversational AI will finally be delivered, and the chatbot can begin its final retreat, at long last.

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