Lorna Crowley, Head of Marketing at Engage Hub questions how Alexa will be implemented into the workplace and how customers will respond.
Amazon’s most recent voice-activated assistant, Alexa is taking the consumer market by storm with more than 15 million devices having been sold across the US. The device is quickly becoming a familiar addition to many households and it is set to continue this way.
The influx of this technology is changing the way the customer interacts with their chosen brands. Long-gone are the days where the customer would pick up the telephone and want to speak to an advisor to resolve their customer query or complain about an issue.
When technology started to become part of a consumer’s everyday life, the communication channels soon switched to social media platforms. These platforms enabled the consumer could perform their administrative tasks at their leisure. This technology also helps to cut costs of call centres as one agent can work on multiple queries at the same time, saving time and money. Despite this communication method working smoothly for brands and consumers, we now seem to be seeing a shift in the advancement of technology by moving into voice-activated assistants. Consumers are beginning to ask Amazon’s Alexa if they can inform them on anything on what the weather outside is like or to play their favourite playlist.
But with this change in technology, businesses must adapt to make sure they are able to adjust to how the consumers want to communicate. Ensuring the website and apps have the technology to recognise voice-activated assistants is really the first step on the journey to being ready for the rise of Alexa. Implementing local language understanding to deliver a fluid customer experience across devices that are connected with each other will be the next step.
To ensure that your digital strategy is complimenting voice-activated assistants like Alexa, it is worth thinking about how your business can integrate data from Alexa to deliver targeted messages via SMS, e-mail or push notifications to customers when they are out and about. For the moment, Alexa is restricted to the home but it won’t be long before we are seeing this type of technology implemented in our lives further. However for the meantime, think about how you can begin to use geo-locating technology to grab the attention and provide the ultimate digital experience for your customers’ who are on the move.
An example of a brand encouraging Alexa into their digital strategy is Capital One. The bank holding company teamed up with Amazon to allow their customers to access their bank accounts through their voice and an Alexa assistant. Customers were able to ask what their bank balance is, ask when payments are due and pay a bill through this technology. This partnership provides an insight into how an AI powered future will look and it’s safe to say it’s pretty exciting.
Keeping up with the latest technology can be quite a challenge but it’s certainly a challenge that is faced by many in all kinds of industries. If your business is not keeping up with the voice-activated technology, you may get left behind. Customers who want to tap into this communication method may look to your competitors that do offer these features and within an instant, you’ve lost their attention.
By Lorna Crowley
Head of Marketing