September 24, 2018

How Voice AI is Transforming Business Operations and Customer Experience

Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are driving the business world into a period of breakthrough digital transformation. Everyone from entrepreneurs to SMBs to big-sized corporations are leveraging AI and machine learning to be better. An important part of this digital transformation is Voice AI. Here is how voice AI is transforming operations and customer experience!

Today, AI-enabled voice recognition is becoming an imperative part of how we interact with technology. What humans say is becoming valuable data that businesses can use to sell products and create personalized consumer experiences. For this reason alone, it is critical for businesses to think about how voice AI will impact the entire customer experience from discovery through to purchase.

If the sales in the past eighteen months are anything to go by, then one would be obliged to say that there is an insatiable appetite for voice devices in the global market.The use of these digital voice assistants and conversational AI coupled with the advancements in AI and the overall underlying technology indicates that voice first devices are poised to transform commerce and marketing within every industry.

Perhaps, this is the reason we have seen a lot of vendors in voice-based AI space come to the fore in recent years. Let there be no doubt—Voice AI is an incredibly ‘smart’ technology. Today, this technology can listen to conversations in real time and process indicators on three fronts and feed them back to agents at call centers.

So what are the three fronts we talk about above? The first front, which includes short-term indicators like speaking rate, time spent speaking or not speaking for all participants in the call etc. are extracted directly from the audio recording call in real time.What this means is that AI can prompt action if an agent is speaking too fast or is leaving long pauses in between speech.

The second front is the long-term patterns of speech and identification of undesirable conversational patterns with domain specific contextual awareness. This means that AI can rate the quality of long-term speech patterns for an agent in a call center or prompt recommendations.The third and last front is conversational dynamics and patterns of interaction from verbal cues. This means that AI can identify cues in the audio to attach features to tone like angry or dominant or check the empathy or support.

Although the largest application for Voice AI in business is the customer service, we are also witnessing a steady increase in adoption for sales, marketing, and some other applications. This increased adoption of Voice AI is largely due to the way it functions.

How Voice AI Works and The Operational Benefits of Using This Technology for Businesses

How you ever considered the role voice plays in the smart devices that we use today. Think smartphones, smart cars, and smart home applications. If you have considered the role of voice in these devices, then you’d know that speech recognition is incredibly complicated. Let’s take how a child learns as an example of this.

From the day the child is born, sounds surround them. Although infants and toddlers don’t understand the words, they absorb all the cues and pronunciations, and their brains form patterns and connections based on how their parents communicate. Voice AI or speech recognition technology works in essentially the same way:

  • The user speaks some words by invoking voice recognition on a mobile app or connected device
  • The spoken words are processed by the recognition software and converted to text
  • The converted text is then provided as input to search mechanism, which returns the results

The success of Voice AI or speech recognition technology can be gauged by the fact that Google’s machine learning algorithms have now achieved a 95% accuracy for the English language. So, we know how Voice AI technology works but what are the operational benefits that businesses can extract from them? The benefits are as under:

Make Communication Easier and Faster

There is no doubt that easier and faster communication between in-house teams and with external stakeholders can help increase operational efficiency. Voice AI makes this possible. Not too long ago, the only option to deliver a command was with a keypad or text. This is time consuming, however, with voice AI, communication between teams and with external stakeholders has become faster and more natural due to connected devices enabled for voice recognition.

Minimize Errors

With voice AI, errors in data entry and operations can be avoided as users can focus on what they’re instead of having to look at their mobile phones or a computer screen while they’re at it.

Improved Productivity

Voice-based devices and apps enable streamlined operations that enhance operational productivity, which of course benefits the company’s bottom line.

Improved Safety

Not only is voice technology quick and safe to interpret and follow, it also makes the work environment safer by allowing people to send instructions or information to an employee or team while they perform their job without them having to risk their safety.

Multiple Uses

There are multiple uses of voice-AI or speech recognition technology. In fact, you can give multiple orders/commands at the same time through voice-enabled devices to carry out tasks.

The above list is not all and there are many other benefits of using voice AI for your business operations.  Add to this the customer experience advantages of the voice technology and you’ll know why it is increasing in popularity and adoption in the business world every day. Some of the popular and most recognized voice-AI technologies include Siri, Baidu, Cortana, and Alexa. If you want to know more about these voice-AI technologies, then get in touch with us today!

by Bobby J Davidson

We love our company and we love what we do.  Check out the ‘Why Percento‘ page to learn more: Love of Technology and Business!  As the President of Percento Technologies International, I provide day-to-day leadership to the company’s senior management and I am personally involved in the strategy, business development and sales activities of the firm.

The company was founded in 1999 with the purpose of providing a one call source for organizations in need of Enterprise IT Consulting and Management.  We also provide a line of products in the boutique Cloud Server space with a touch of high-end website strategy consulting and design services.   We personalizes the IT Service experience with a team approach, working with clients from diverse sectors of industry, including energy services, financial, legal, entertainment, healthcare, hospitality, retail and general and/or corporate business.  percentotech.com/contact

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