Voice Technology is fast becoming an indispensable part of our modern-day lives.
Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana, they all have become household names. Look around, and you’ll see a significant number of people using these virtual assistants almost daily.
Voice technology is also getting popular in the business world, especially in the e-commerce sector. Many e-commerce businesses are incorporating voice tech to improve sales and drive more success.
After all, the use of voice gives a human touch to technology and makes it interesting and fun. And then there is this ease of use and speed associated with it.
Let’s take a look at how voice technology can help e-commerce businesses in Raleigh improve user experience, engagement, sales, and revenue.
Growing Voice Technology – A New Trend
Voice Technology’s adoption is increasingly on the rise – especially after the global pandemic.
Consumers are happily shifting to shopping & paying online and avoiding touching things in public places like a shopping mall. Click To TweetLet us see how the use of voice technology is growing.
Some important statistics to know:
- In 2019, the global smart speaker market (with voice assistant) was valued at 11.9 billion U.S. dollars. By 2025, it is projected that this annual figure could grow to over 35.5 billion U.S. dollars. (Source)
- It is expected that by 2022, the voice-based shopping will touch revenue of 40 billion U.S. dollars. (Source)
- In 2019, around 3.25 billion digital voice assistants were being used around the world. Forecasts suggest that this number will reach around 8 billion units (a number even higher than the world’s population) by 2023. (Source)
- As of January 2019, 45 % of Millennials reported using voice-assistance when e-shopping. (Source)
- Voice searching is 3.7x faster than typing. (Source)
How E-commerce Businesses in Raleigh can utilize Voice Tech
Google and Alexa are no longer restricted only to be the voices of Google Home or Amazon Echo. You’ll be amazed to see how these voice applications are helping many businesses grow.
Raleigh is home to many e-commerce companies. Many of these can benefit from utilizing custom voice-enabled apps. The digital landscape has drastically changed, and the changes have impacted customer behavior. Raleigh businesses must alter their business strategies to suit changing customer behavior.
Some critical questions that every e-commerce business at Raleigh must consider are: How will my customers benefit if I integrate voice technology with my business? What can I do to integrate voice-enabled services to my business?
Let’s dig deeper into the next sections and find out the answer to these questions.
The following are the areas where Raleigh e-commerce businesses can apply voice technology:
1. Build a seamless experience for customers to place, cancel and track orders
Voice applications allow consumers to place, cancel, and track orders with the help of voice. The idea is to give a phenomenal shopping experience to your customer.
For example, when shopping for groceries, many customers prefer to make repeat purchases. In this case, the voice application can remember the customer’s preferred products and create personalized item recommendations based on their shopping history. Such a feature is available with Walmart.
Amazon, on the other hand, offers voice shopping for all the goods via its Echo device, which is a smart speaker. While shopping for items like cosmetics, clothes, bags, furniture, etc., customers may like to examine it closely. This can be done by integrating the voice assistants with TV, smartphone, or other viewing devices.
2. Smooth Voice searching experience
We are all familiar with the frustration that we feel when we walk up and down every single aisle of a shopping store to finally not find the item we’re looking for.
Wouldn’t it be great if our customers don’t have to go through this frustration? In fact, they don’t even have to search the website to look for items. They just call out Alexa, tell her what they need, and ask her to do it for them.
3. Voice-enabled chatbots
An application that is programmed to do specific tasks is known as a bot.
A chatbot is an application that allows people to interact with the technology using a variety of input methods like voice or text.
A Voice-enabled chatbot is an application that interacts and communicates through voice. They accept the command in both oral or written form and then reply through voice.
The chances are that you are already using a text-based chatbot in your e-commerce business. Your business can significantly benefit from the use of voice-enabled chatbots. It can connect with the world at the human level –handle customer queries, complaints, and interactions with a lot more ease. Your customers will be able to have an experience of shopping online in a conversational way.
Both customers and businesses like them.
Customers like interacting through them because, unlike the traditional manner in which customer care representatives would leave the callers waiting on hold for long, voice-enabled chatbots respond quickly and efficiently to queries and requests.
There are reasons why businesses prefer using them:
- Because bots need not be paid any salary.
- Their use leads to a happy customer because of quick responses and speedy resolution of issues.
- Satisfied customers result in more business.
4. Access to insightful Consumer data
While sending a search request or placing an order or while canceling an order, the consumer’s words can be transformed into valuable business findings.
The collected data can store information related to customer’s interests, preferences, intentions, and expectations. Every business would like to discover their customer’s thoughts on their products, services, competitors.
5. User Profile Management
User profile management leads to an additional level of user’s personalization. Voice assistants can create user profiles on the basis of the user’s voice. Personalized notification and campaign launch can attract individual members of a family.
6. Voice promotions
Promotional offers allow brands to promote new products. They are also used to clear out existing inventory to make way for newer ones. But many users miss out on such offers because they are not aware of it.
Voice promotions are just-in-time voice nudges that inform the shopper about the offers available. (“There is an offer to buy two and get one free. Would you like to buy two items instead?”), and following that up with a specific yes or no question. It is just like the real-world experience, where the person at the checkout counter pushes an offer.
7. Routine business tasks
You can enhance your business processes with AI-driven speech recognition. Here is how the futuristic technology can help your business.
- Dictation: Allow users to dictate content for documentation purposes.
- Manage emails: Allow users (employees) to access, write, and send emails by voice commands.
- Setting up meetings: Allow users to schedule meetings, book a conference room, and notify others.
- Setting reminders: Allow users to set up important reminders about a scheduled important meeting.
Raleigh is a hub for many e-commerce companies; businesses can benefit by applying the above-mentioned features.
Let us find out why voice technology must be used in your business.
Benefits of Voice Tech in Your Business
All businesses nowadays, especially e-commerce businesses use mobile apps. Keeping in mind how many times users check their phones, every business must consider having a quality app developed for themselves.
Voice-enabled mobile apps are in demand. People prefer talking to their gadgets – phones and tablets. Rather than clicking, tapping, or manually navigating through the app.
If you are still unsure of how beneficial voice technology applications will be for your business, make sure you read on. Here are the reasons why you must invest in voice application development.
1. Voice tech will make your business more user friendly
A voice-enabled mobile app is definitely convenient to use and, therefore, is considered user friendly.
It’s a known fact that people can speak almost three times faster than they can type on a device.
When app users interact through voice, they can bypass many unnecessary steps and thus save time. For example, when a shopper interacts through a voice-enabled e-commerce app and decides to buy some items, the process is faster as compared to a mobile app without voice functionality.
In the voice-enabled app, the shopper can quickly select the items with a voice command and bring it to checkout with another voice command. But, if the mobile app does not have voice functionality, it will need multiple navigations, clicks, and taps to reach the checkout page.
Users are likely to interact a lot more with the e-commerce business if it is easy and fast.
2. Voice tech is cost-effective for business
Gone are the days when speech algorithms would take a lot of money and time to develop. These days, leading technology companies in Raleigh, such as Imaginovation, use different technologies to make an existing mobile app voice-enabled. Neither is it costly nor is it time-consuming.
Another reason this is cost-effective is that a voice answering customer’s queries would mean no requirement for customer care staff and its salary.
3. This is the right time to get ahead of the competition
Since a very small percentage of mobile apps are currently voice-enabled. This is the apt time to invest and put your app ahead of your competitors. It will help your e-commerce business stand out.
4. Facilitate users to interact with the app hands-free
Users will like it if they get the facility to interact with apps while driving or working out. Voice technology allows multitasking, which is one of the biggest advantages. The efficiency of apps can increase multi-folds by integrating voice technology.
5. Option to move beyond the screen
Users of voice-enabled mobile apps are anyways less dependent on their screens to get things done. They can simply talk to the devices without looking at the screens. This creates an opportunity for businesses to develop voice-enabled mobile apps that can be accessed without screens.
Some Examples of How Businesses are using Voice Tech
Many big retailers like Walmart, Target, Walgreens, and Ulta have partnered with Google for their e-commerce services. Amazon has dramatically enhanced the shopping experience for customers with Alexa.
Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and Dunkin’ have integrated voice ordering features for their customers.
Alexa is also helping us travel. Travel Companies, Expedia, and Kayak have utilized voice applications like Alexa in their business. It can help the customers book a rental car, check for flights and prices, check flight status, and book a hotel, all with the help of a few voice commands.
Lamps Plus is one of the leading lighting retailers in the USA. Lamps Plus has integrated an AI-powered platform for shoppers to track orders with digital conversational channels instantly.
Develop A Successful Voice Application for Your Business with Imaginovation
Now! Now is the time to start with a voice application in your business. Once you set up with the voice-enabled application for your business, you will build a reputation of being a brand that customers can trust.
If you need help in getting a customized voice-enabled solution for your e-commerce business, then get in touch with us.
We are an award-winning web and mobile app development company in Raleigh, with a vast experience of crafting remarkable digital success stories for diverse companies. Let’s talk.
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