According to a survey conducted by PWC, venturing into the world of voice-powered eCommerce is the way to go. The survey revealed that 50% of the respondents had purchased items using their voice assistant, and a further 25% would welcome the idea in the future. They consider voice assistants as a faster, easier, and smarter way to carry out everyday activities. Is speech recognition the future of marketing?
And that’s not all. The majority of us now default to asking Siri, Nest, or Alexa for help – rather than looking at our tablets or smartphones. The number of digital voice assistants is expected to reach 8.4 billion units by 2024 – a number more than the world’s population.
In short, people want to listen, speak, and be heard. Any organization that doesn’t want to play a catch-up game needs to soon rethink its customer experience strategy.
This post will explore why seizing the speech recognition opportunity and optimizing marketing strategies for voice searches is a good decision for modern businesses.
Briefly, What Is Speech Recognition?
As the name implies, this is a form of technology that recognizes speech and allows people to search for items by stating their search word aloud rather than typing it into the search field.
You Can Use Speech Recognition Technology To:
- Request specific information about a product/service
- Make a query on a search engine
- Clarify your request
- Launch a program
- Search for audio or video files
- Call someone
It’s worth noting; this isn’t entirely a new concept.
Rather, speech recognition software has a long history dating back to the 1950s, when machines first began recognizing numbers.
Fast-forward, companies have spent a lot of money and time on developing apps, voice recognition software, and gadgets to make it more effective. Today, computers can understand our speech, even recognizing the varying tones and accents of our voices.
Actually, most platforms offering this kind of technology currently record an error rate of only 5% and below.
Importance Of Speech Recognition In The Marketing World
Speech is the future of how organizations will interact with their customers. Here are a few reasons why modern businesses and marketers should leverage speech recognition technology:
1. Customers Are Enjoying More Personalized Responses
Over time, Google has discovered that people search for personalized questions, such as “Is Walgreens still open?” or “Are there any pizza restaurants nearby?”
To justify the example, Alexa has turned out to be a popular product among many users and can perform a range of tasks, including streaming music on Amazon or Spotify. Even better, shoppers can now custom-order millions of items from Amazon without lifting a finger.
2. Enables Smart Shopping
The speech feature is not merely about using voice: it is also about utilizing machine learning technology and artificial intelligence effectively.
This makes the speech feature smart enough to capture customers’ shopping habits and behavior. For example, when people are doing their monthly grocery shopping online, voice assistance can suggest and remind them about items previously featured in their cart and that aren’t on the current list. This is a notable advantage to brands and shoppers as well.
3. Easy To Collect Reviews
For a long time, collecting online reviews has been problematic for businesses; however, customers can now share their feedback effortlessly, thanks to voice search technology. Unlike the time-consuming process of typing lengthy feedback, voice assistants solicit specific ratings and answers.
The ease of reviewing also makes the feedback more genuine, which eventually benefits both the seller and potential customers wishing to purchase the same product later.
4. Time-Efficient
As we have shortly mentioned, voice search is quicker than typing a query. Usually, the average person’s typing speed is about 30-35 words per minute. On the contrary, voice search can process around 100 words per minute. Thus, voice search empowers customers to communicate fast and get results more promptly, which is an exciting feature for many.
With voice search, customers can also shop on the move or even while doing other activities, such as driving or cooking.
5. Better Security
Everybody nowadays is aware of the security concerns associated with online shopping. Voice payments, therefore, are becoming a convenient and secure method for people to make online purchases as it largely depends on speech recognition.
Speech Is, To A Large Extent, The Future Of Marketing
For businesses, it is high time to incorporate speech recognition technology into their customer acquisition, sales, and customer experiences strategies. It’s a game-changing technology for brands and marketers everywhere. After all, the global voice and speech recognition market size is projected to reach $31.82 million by 2025. You need to be prepared for what is coming!
