The Era of Voice Technology: Voice in Retail Business
Voice technology is one of the most popular new technologies in the online market. Voice search and voice assistants are taking over all markets, especially e-commerce and retail. Companies are now considering the use of advanced voice technologies to converse with humans and even read their emotions.
Assistants like Alexa, Siri, OK Google, etc., are capable of carrying out conversations by understanding context and giving solutions accordingly. Thus, it is safe to say that the future of retail is voice technology.
Voice in retail websites is also a reality in this day and age. With further improvements in this sector, having natural and intuitive interactions with customers is becoming simple and easy.
People have started keeping voice-operated gadgets at home and are keen to try out new technologies for assistance. Before determining how this is the next big thing in the future of retail, let us understand what voice technology is and how it benefits a retail customer.
What Is Voice Technology?
Voice technology, more specifically voice recognition, enables customers to speak directly to their digital assistants or AI-enabled devices. It works by powering conversational AI to recognize speech and texts and translate their meaning across languages.
With the increasing popularity of digital shopping, customers are leaning towards a voice interface because it makes the whole experience smoother. All you have to do is speak out your request and you will be on the path towards making a purchase. It does not require typing at all.
According to a study, more than 60% of adults in the US use voice actively, with over 36% of them regularly using speakers for tasks related to shopping. Since voice technology in retail gives an easy and hands-free shopping experience, it is becoming the go-to move for several brands globally. This has led to the discovery of several voice recognition products that serve customers’ needs and open up more avenues for the future.
Technologies such as home assistants and voice support in Android have already taken over the market. Experts predict that this customer behavior will become more common over the years, with expected growth from $2B to $40B in voice-activated shopping in the US alone.
Thus, it is safe to say that voice search in retail is going to remain a big thing.
Benefits of Voice in Retail
Retailers are choosing to switch to voice technology because of the various benefits it provides. This complementary feature helps users conclude sales without engaging with their hands, which means they can order things while driving, doing household chores, and so on, without even picking up their phones. The ideal way to adopt this is incremental.
Studies say that 51% of users prefer voice to research products. Additionally, a significant number of people use it to buy pre-ordered items or things from their wishlist. It won’t be long before voice technology in retail blooms into a completely commercialized service.
There are two main areas of voice technology for retail users.
Voice Search
Using voice command, customers can search for products or services on a specific website or the internet. With the advancement in speech recognition, voice search was integrated into smartphones and then retail websites.
Voice search is one of the crucial aspects of SEO as well since more than 3.5 billion searches are made every day, almost 50% of which are voice. Voice search in retail gives relevant answers and often a single result that fits your question perfectly.
Conversational Commerce
Shopping via voice assistants is a frictionless and easy task. They can address customer queries effectively and also perform tasks quickly. Voice shopping reduces checkout time and can carry searching, adding to cart, transaction processing, and other tasks on its own.
This is a great advantage for people who are busy or have disabilities preventing them from shopping the conventional way.
What Makes Voice Technology the Future of Retail?
Voice tech has already captured some portion of the retail market and is expected to be a bigger craze in the near future. Due to its benefits towards ensuring a smooth shopping experience, it is the chosen path for many retail website owners and customers alike.
Voice in retail will only gain a bigger market as it enables the following.
Immersive User Experience
With voice technology, retail websites can emulate the experience of shopping in person and being helped by a knowledgeable sales assistant. From the comfort of their homes, users can obtain information about the product, pricing, variants, specifications, FAQs, and so on.
Voice assistants also provide customized recommendations based on user behavior and shopping history. All these combine to make an immersive user experience.
Speed and Convenience
Voice technology in retail gives faster results compared to text search. It requires the user to do less and get more specific results. This is helpful for customers who do not want to perform multiple actions just to get product information. In the future, voice search is expected to give real-time results.
This automatically provides convenience to users by eliminating the need to even look at a screen through the whole shopping process. If you know what to order and prefer to do it on the go, voice search will be more preferable to traditional online searches for shopping.
Authenticity and Engagement
Using voice commands is an authentic process as human beings generally prefer talking overwriting. It also provides natural reciprocity and opens the channel for an engaging conversation that ends in a purchase or query resolution.
Building technology that is more interactive only brings it closer to normal human interaction, which is why it is bound to see a rise in the future as well.
Adaptability
The best thing about voice technology in retail is that you do not have to abandon traditional methods to adopt this. It can be integrated with a combination of traditional shopping technologies to get proven results in existing distribution channels and open up new channels of business.
With the added adaptability of voice tech, your business can ensure all-encompassing efficiency and effectiveness in connecting with customers.
Conclusion
The retail industry has to evolve with the changing times, just to keep pace with the taste of its customers. Emerging technologies have a massive impact on this industry, voice recognition being one of them. Voice technology is undoubtedly the future of retail, with big steps being taken towards addressing current issues and making the tech even better for future applications.
A digital shopping assistant that helps retail brands sell more faster.
AskSid is a global conversational solutions company that partners with retail brands to elevate shopping experiences by leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence. Our capabilities extend beyond support automation, extending to insight extraction, analysis, and business opportunity generation, all by leveraging the power of conversational data. We combine domain expertise and cutting-edge technology to build a Retail AI Brain for our clients, that mines insights from conversational data and becomes the basis of the business opportunity creation we offer. The power of actionable customer data has allowed us to create value and bring change to global brands including AkzoNobel, Danone, Wolford, Akris, and Himalaya. AskSid has live implementations in 23+ countries and supports 100+ international languages, managing millions of satisfied customers the world over.
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