Will voice commerce supplant web commerce?
The voice is the most natural, fastest, most effective, and most popular medium for commercial exchanges. Since the origin of trade in the Eastern markets 4,000 years ago to the Apple Store of the 21st century, oral dialogue has always been at the heart of commerce.
Even today, from street vending in markets to smart speakers, voice is the ideal channel for trading without latency and friction.
Voice commerce: A rapidly expanding market worldwide... And in France
The global figures for voice commerce are significant:
1 billion searches have been made using voice in the United States since 2018;
According to Gartner estimates, 30% of web sessions in 2020 will be partially or totally conducted by voice;
Voice commerce is expected to be worth nearly 40 billion dollars in 2022 globally, primarily thanks to the rise of voice assistants.
In France, voice commerce is also firmly established. A study by Havas Paris and Paris Retail Week published in June 2018 highlighted that the French are already attracted to conversational commerce: 57% of them rely on voice assistants to facilitate their shopping. Similarly, a significant portion of the French population (56%) claims to own a device with a voice assistant. Unsurprisingly, millennials are the most connected, with 74% being potential users compared to only 45% of those aged 55 and older. Nevertheless, the preferred support remains the telephone.
At the origins of the democratization of voicebots
Although Siri has existed (already) since 2011, recent advances in voice recognition have expanded the range of possibilities and are responsible for the democratization of voicebots.
In 2017, Microsoft claimed it could match human voice recognition performance, and currently, the failure rate of voice assistants is estimated to be between 5 and 10%. Predictions suggest that a success rate exceeding 95% will allow voice to establish itself with the general public in 2021.
A movement has thus been initiated, and industry giants are positioning themselves one after the other to try to claim the largest share of a growing pie. Thus, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon are the main players in this flourishing ecosystem and are placing their pieces on a market primarily driven by the growth of the smart speaker sector, such as Google Echo or Amazon Alexa.
Voicebots are also subject to strong demand as they are already adopted by younger generations. In the long run, placing an order via a voice request will become the norm for these generations that are now accustomed to conversing with machines that obey their voice.
Why voicebots have imposed themselves so quickly
Voicebots primarily have the crucial advantage of being able to provide total availability 24/7 and allow for immediate handling of customer requests. This need for availability is one of the main priorities expressed by customers. Indeed, according to a study conducted by Smart Tribune in 2019, 98% of them believe that wait times via phone or chat are too long. Thus, they aspire to more autonomy, immediacy, and adaptability from customer services, which voicebots are fully capable of offering.
Moreover, the voicebot bridges the digital social divide by offering a service that ranges from technology fully mastered by the most technophobic, "the telephone," to the most cutting-edge services with commands via connected devices. The voicebot is also the preferred tool for the blind and visually impaired (1.7 million people in France) and represents a true revolution for these populations in their use of the internet, offering them new perspectives, especially compared to traditional web commerce. Furthermore, voicebots are naturally multilingual. It is estimated that over 2.1 million people in France do not have French as their mother tongue (Gartner study), and for whom voicebots provide the opportunity to overcome this language barrier like no other tool.
Finally, oral exchanges are much faster than written exchanges. Even a person perfectly accustomed to writing on a computer takes three times longer to express themselves via a keyboard than by voice. And we are not even considering senior populations who are not digital natives or other populations that writing sidelines! According to a Gartner study, while there are 10.5 million connected seniors in France, 95% of them acknowledge having difficulties typing text on their keyboard or mobile phone. Moreover, there are 2.5 million illiterate people in France, while 6 million school-age children still do not master writing... yet can easily speak to a voice assistant. All these populations for whom the voice channel appears as an obvious and natural recourse against their inability to navigate the traditional web commerce channel.
Concrete applications that provide significant added value
Voice AI serving commerce is thus a reality that is firmly becoming part of our practices, and several of its applications already give a glimpse of its potential.
First of all, phone & collect represents a vocal alternative to click & collect. It enables the implementation of a phone order system that conveys the order directly to sellers or a customer service center via email. Phone lines are unclogged, thus facilitating order placement at a later time.
The phone & survey enables direct satisfaction survey operations over the phone. Vocalizing a satisfaction survey offers the opportunity to personalize and humanize the collection campaign and encourages receiving feedback in the respondent's own words.
Finally, we can mention the phone & purchase, a process by which a conversational assistant guides the customer through their purchase process based on a product catalog. This allows for the automation of old paper catalogs or targeting a clientele that is further removed from new technologies.
Voice commerce: A definite potential... But real limits
Voice commerce profoundly transforms the customer relationship, and the use of voice reshapes the purchasing process while simplifying the customer experience. However, its expansion faces certain limits. First, technical progress still needs to be made to reduce the error rate and improve the understanding of voice assistants and other voice commerce tools. One of the upcoming challenges will be to respond to requests more complex than what current technology allows.
Similarly, one should not overlook the regulatory constraints related to the use of customer personal data, closely associated with security constraints.
The human factor must also be taken into account: a certain segment of the population remains resistant to technology use, and many consumers do not feel comfortable making purchases by voice, fearing an increased risk of hacking or accidental purchases, especially when they must provide credit card information.
Despite everything, voice commerce asserts itself as an obvious choice and disrupts traditional web commerce. While barriers remain to be overcome before it completely supplants it, its rise seems irreversible and its progress will continue steadily in the coming years. That is why ViaDialog has developed a team of experts in the field. If you wish to consult with our experts, feel free to schedule an appointment with one of them !
