If you’ve been trying hard to boost your revenue and enhance the usability of ecommerce apps, voice assistants are here to help you out.
Before we understand how voice assistants shape the ecommerce industry — what is voice commerce and how is it related to voice assistants?
What is Voice Commerce?
Voice commerce is the act of employing voice recognition technology to enable users to interact with ecommerce websites and applications to search, get support, and purchase products just by using their voice. Voice commerce is growing fast, and is expected to reach 8 billion devices by 2023, and is currently at 1.5 billion devices now, according to Juniper Research. So if you’ve been thinking about adding a voice assistant to your ecommerce store, now is the perfect time. You’re not too late!
What’s more, the general market awareness related to voice technology is particularly high. According to a report by PwC, only 10% of surveyed respondents were unaware of voice-enabled devices and products. On the other hand, 90% of the aware respondents had used a voice assistant. Widespread adoption of voice assistants is being driven by younger consumers and households.
That said, businesses are reaping the benefits from the mainstream adoption of voice assistants in various ways.
How Voice Assistants Drive Business Outcomes
Business Cost Savings
If you believe that implementing voice assistants in your ecommerce store is going to be a hefty expenditure, you might need to reconsider your views. Yes, you may need to invest a bigger amount upfront, but considering the gains it brings a few years down the line – the amount you are investing is almost nothing.
As a matter of fact, the return on investment for voice assistants in apps is considerably huge. First, there are low maintenance costs. The easiest route is to go for a third-party stand-alone voice assistant. You need to pay them on a subscription basis, and all the maintenance is their headache.
Secondly, as voice assistants are going mainstream, they attract better leads and close more sales. Users get to shop even when they are out somewhere – driving or meeting someone. They only need to instruct the voice assistant to place an order for XYZ, and that’s all – no scrolling, browsing, and tapping required.
This pretty much explains why consumer spending via voice assistants will reach 18% by 2022.
Higher Customer Satisfaction
Believe us when we say that voice assistants make way for better customer satisfaction. Consumers get personalized attention and real-time responses, just the same way they would if they were to shop in a brick-and-mortar store. All this in the comfort of their home.
A voice assistant reduces the time to buy considerably. According to Bing, searching with your voice is about 3.7 times faster than typing. Google has the same views as well. It revealed that 70% of searches that happen on Google Assistant are in natural language.
What’s more, a voice assistant not only helps you serve a better user experience, but you also get your hands on critical data points that can be further used to enhance your services. Considering that 40% of adults use voice search once daily, it’s easy to see what kind of data you can gather by adding a voice assistant to your ecommerce store.
Savings On Support Costs
Having a voice assistant means having a customer service team 24/7. A voice assistant provides automated customer support to your users, and with less costs. They can take care of most of their queries, thus delivering a higher response time and speeding up the resolution time.
This is why 93% of consumers are satisfied with the services provided by their voice assistants. Further, around 50% of consumers feel organized, 45% feel informed, and 37% feel happy with the help of these voice assistants.
Conclusion
Voice assistants are a necessity to stay ahead of the competition and deliver a best in class user experience. A voice assistant not only helps you bring down costs, but it also enhances customer satisfaction and improves the performance of your customer support team.
Go ahead, and add a voice assistant to your app. How, you ask? Alan AI is here to help. Alan is a conversational voice AI platform that simplifies the entire process of adding a voice assistant to your application. Contact us to learn more about our services and how we could help you realize your goals.