Why Every Company Needs to Find Its Voice

Voice interactions are now an everyday phenomenon, and large, consumer-facing companies are setting the standard for the way that consumers interact with brands via voice. Let’s check out a few examples.

Amazon

Amazon. Order products using Alex-enabled devices.

McDonald’s.

McDonald’s. Rolling out personalized, voice-enabled drive throughs.

Spotify

Spotify. In-app voice assistant that allows you to access your music via voice.

Bank of America.

Bank of America. The Erica voice assistant lets you do things like check your balance using voice!

The expectation is already being set that as a consumer, you can speak directly to a brand on a voice activated device. I believe this expectation to continue to drive consumer behavior, and soon, consumers will come to expect that they can interact with EVERY business via voice technology.

Why do I believe this?

i.) Voice is the most natural way to interact with technology. Consumers of all ages are heavily adopting voice applications, because they allow you to execute tasks without having to interact with potentially confusing visual interfaces. With voice, you can easily interact with an application’s backend, pushing and pulling data real time with ease. Voice is truly the most elegant user interface we have.

ii.) The number of voice-enabled devices is exploding. Over the past few years, voice applications have been dominant primarily in the home. That’s changing fast. Soon, most in-ear headphones, cars, and smart phones will be voice-enabled and capable of interacting with all kinds of voice assistants. Consumers will be trying to reach every business via voice technology — this means that every business needs a voice experience, just like every business needs a website.

iii.) The same thing happened with websites and mobile apps. Large business were the first to develop website and mobile apps, and consumers very quickly thereafter came to expect that they can interact with any business via website or mobile app.

We have the underlying technology to realize this future; however, only the most sophisticated companies have been able to build voice experiences that please their customers. Why is that? Even though the underlying technology is quite straightforward to develop with, the barriers to developing a voice application are quite high. There are no tools in the market for non-technical users to create voice experiences. Further, audio experiences are new domain with very little conventional design wisdom. Most people have an intuitive understanding of what a “good” website looks like, but almost no one knows what a “good” voice experience sounds like. So there is a both a lack of tooling and design expertise that is holding the vast majority of brands from participating in voice today. Companies need help applying AI-powered voice technology to solve their business problems.

To address this need, creative agencies and development shops are starting build build out voice practices, with the intent of helping businesses develop these experiences. But these firms can only serve a small set of businesses that can afford their steep fees.

That’s why we built gablex. gablex is an interactive audio platform for brands to create audio experiences that engage their customers. Brands can easily design their own audio experiences (voice AI + rich audio + integrations) without needing engineering or voice design expertise. We’re a new startup (just 4 months old) and are excited to bring interactive audio to every business out there. Stay tuned for more!