Preparing For Voice AI Assistants
‘Hey, Alexa, can you book me a table for Thursday this week at a Thai restaurant in Covent Garden, for 6 people at about 8PM?’
Chris, I have located two suitable restaurants, both have 4 star Trip Advisor ratings and one, the Laughing Octopus has an Outstanding review from SquareMeal. If you wish to reserve at the Laughing Octopus, they have a table available at 8PM and you will receive a complementary cocktail upon arrival. Please let me know if you would like to proceed?
Yes, please, book me in and let them know that we have a nut allergy for one of the guests
OK, that’s done, I have notified them of your request and they will contact you directly via email if they need to discuss further. You will receive a booking confirmation email and I have texted you the address and contact details.’
—————
The above may be a little beyond what is currently available, and is based on what I believe the hospitality sector may expect, but it won’t be too long before people will be able to interact in such a manner with their devices using voice AI assistants.
If you are in any doubt about the uptake of voice as the next generation of search, consider this: Amazon has so far sold over 25 million Echo (for Alexa) smart speakers, Google Assistant is available on more than 400 million devices whilst SIRI from Apple is also now available within a home-pod. Over the next decade, these and other AI assistants will likely become the primary channel through which people get information, goods and services and marketing will turn into a battle for their attention.
As AI Assistants become the gatekeepers for web-based content, marketeers need to ensure they are represented and can maximise the sales channel.
Whilst there are numerous AI assistants currently in development, it is reasonable to expect that there will be a period of consolidation, leading to a small number of key players. The winning platforms will gather and deliver information to consumers, being their interface with home systems, appliances and other machines. The assistant will also be the portal to an infinite shopping centre of goods and services. Inevitably, the more consumers use the assistant, the better it will understand their habits and preferences, and the better it will meet their needs - increasing their satisfaction in a self-reinforcing circle.
For marketers the omnipotence of voice AI matters hugely as they will face difficulty in controlling the customer experience. This will require them to shift their attention from reinforcing their relationship with consumers to optimising their position on AI results. Key to this will be understanding the customised purchasing criteria that the AI applies on behalf of each customer. It is highly likely that sellers (or content aggregators) will have to pay platforms to get that information and to be listed on them, this will probably also include bidding on key terms to be listed at the top of results. For many sectors, this means that those marketers with the deepest pockets (assuming technical capability) will win out.
What this means for those considering their digital strategy, is that they should start looking very seriously at what is involved in getting onto the voice AI assistants. In the case of Alexa it is about adding a programmatical layer to your digital activities that the AI assistants can interact with, called ‘skills’ with each skill allowing a task to be undertaken.
In some ways, the current state-of-play reminds me of the early days of optimising websites for mobile. Back in the early/mid 2000’s each year was predicted to be the year that mobile would really take-off, and we were encouraged to build first WAP then mobile-specific websites to meet the expected demand. However, it was only when the iPhone came on the market, and the emergence of full responsive websites, that the world changed for the better. However, with Voice AI the gestation period is likely to be condensed, meaning we can expect big things much, much sooner.
