These days, we dictate emails. We talk to Siri. We tell light switches to turn themselves off. From our personal lives at home to our professional lives at work, voice AI is changing the way we live. Our voice has become a powerful tool, and just like you, we are learning to navigate these new waters.
Voice technology is here, and like it or loathe it, it’s hard to miss. More and more (and more), it’s fundamentally changing the way we interact with both people and devices.
Voice AI started as a method of convenience. Sending a text message or email through voice apps became a more natural and faster way of communicating than typing. Asking Siri to give you directions to the nearest Starbucks became a more efficient alternative than looking it up yourself. While these tools are still convenient, they have slowly become our “normal” and are no longer seen as “groundbreaking.” Hence, we are impatiently awaiting the next wave of voice-powered capabilities, but what will that be?
At this point, all signs point to the future of voice-enabled technology to be conversation. Devices are becoming more intelligent as they learn to process not only the words we speak but the emotion we express as well — pitch, tone, volume, mood, etc. Voice AI is becoming more conversational and human-like as it begins to interpret intent and meaning more effectively.
Increasingly, voice AI is moving into and adding significant value to a growing number of industries, especially those that are based on “real human” customer service performance, such as banks, insurers, healthcare, hospitality, and a host of others.
By leveraging voice technology, businesses can have more accurate and immediate insight to consumers, which will ultimately help them deliver a more pleasant customer service experience. For example, some of the latest AI-powered voice capabilities have enabled organizations to provide in-call guidance for call center agents, helping “the humans” with their communication style and ultimately allowing them to be more empathetic and responsive.
But just because you’re not in a call center, don’t assume that voice AI has nothing to offer you or your business. Any operation that relies on better human conversations could benefit from, and perhaps be disrupted by, this technology.
While technology is great and makes our lives more convenient, there is still a lot to be gained from good old-fashioned human interaction. Voice-powered technology can help you solve some problems more efficiently, to be sure, but keep in mind that it cannot listen to your situation, assess your needs, offer new perspectives, or help you map out a plan forward. (Or ask how your elderly mother is doing.)
Here at MGA, we fully utilize the power of technology to leverage our business and ultimately, to benefit our clients’ experience, but we assure you that we will always be a face, a voice, a “real human” to answer your complex problems and make them simple.
If you have a problem to solve, let’s talk!