Read time 10 mins

Voice Search to Voice Commerce – How Far Away is It?

14/02/2018 - Digital Marketing

In recent times, we have seen the pace of technology speed up exceptionally. Today smart phones and digital assistants have enormously more power than the computers from school days. Today a world of answers, entertainment and products are just a quick search away.

Voice technology is nothing really new, some cars during the 1980s told their drivers when something was worn rather than simply putting a light on the dash and the Nokia phones of the late ‘90s had a function that allowed you to hold a button down and “call mum”. This technology is continued into today’s smart phones and today’s cars allow the driver to hold a button down on the steering wheel and “call Mum” safely and conveniently from behind the wheel.

Man wearing smart watch and glasses, using a smartphone outdoors

Rather than typing your search or opening your diary to see what time an appointment is, Siri, Alexa and Google are all available to ask questions of, making it even easier to find something out. Also, with the Amazon account, Android Pay and Apple Pay, our devices and our money are becoming increasingly linked; these services give us spending power literally at our fingertips but given the fact that we can ask questions of our devices, surely the next logical step is that we transact vocally too.

With ownership of digital assistants on the rise, in fact 19% of U.S. customers have already a digital home assistant (Amazon Echo or similar), imagine this – rather than writing your shopping list, you simply walk around the kitchen asking for the groceries you are low on, then hey presto they are delivered.

Going back to the Nokia phone in the ‘90s, the one you could talk to. It always felt a bit gimmicky as there could be no background noise for you to “call Mum” successfully. However, today’s AI voice technologies are empowering a shift towards conversation-based commerce and what has begun with Amazon and its echo is set to continue. After all, Amazon Echo owners can already place orders on Amazon by simply asking Alexa.

The key to making this technology work is in the language (no really it is) and the way in which we speak; phrasing our questions as if we were speaking with someone else. Natural language search is moving away from the traditional “taxi, Leicester” type queries that we are used to, shifting towards conversational style searches, “I need to get a taxi back from Leicester”.

Therefore, as AI’s ability to understand the way in which we speak grows so will the opportunity for users to transact with companies using their voice as our technology reaches ever new heights. In twenty short years, voice recognition has gone from “call um” to “where can I buy Mum some flowers for her birthday?”. Voice commerce really isn’t that far away.

Get in touch with the Un.titled team today on 0116 326 0090 or say [email protected] to talk more about voice commerce.