{"id":18921,"date":"2017-08-24T15:05:21","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T14:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digileaders.com\/?p=18921"},"modified":"2019-05-08T14:46:39","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T13:46:39","slug":"voice-new-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/voice-new-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Voice is the new black"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gartner predicts by 2018 that 30% of Touch will be replaced by Voice<\/a> [1]. Whilst sitting on the judging panel of the Stanford Ignite competition in London, I bumped into mobile guru Roy Vella<\/a> and we ended up discussing about our new smart voice assistants: Alexa from Amazon and Google Home. His daughter recently asked him to find a calculator to complete her homework. As he was coming back with it in hands, his younger son asked why they were not asking Alexa the calculations directly. The smart assistant of Amazon was sold out ahead of the Christmas holidays and Echo Dot (Alexa\u2019s sister) was the bestselling item on all of Amazon for Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday [2<\/a>].<\/p>\n

I was then heading to Paris for Christmas and whilst taking place in the passenger seat, my mum surprised me by asking Siri (Apple\u2019s voice assistant) to text my sister we were on our way.<\/p>\n

In the labs, we have been experimenting with Alexa earlier this year [3<\/a>] and followed with all sorts of testing around AI, Chatbots and various IoT<\/a>, without forgetting to address some of the trade-off between convenience and privacy and what happens with the data [4<\/a>].<\/p>\n

What I found interesting is that voice is forcing the switch from transaction to conversation in our human-machine interaction. As more customers are embracing digital banking only, it develops the ties needed to better stay on top of your finances in your day to day. What we found odd a couple of years ago, thinking we will never talk alone to a device, is changing; the same way we thought it was mad to find your partner online.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s coming next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Voice assistant technologies are still maturing: Alexa (Amazon), Home (Google), Cortana (Microsoft), Siri (Apple), Now (Google) are only at the beginning of this journey. Some players like Nuance, traditionally positioned in Telephony Banking, are offering a mesh interface between all these voice assistants and your potential webchat, \u2018chatbot\u2019 (webchat-robot) or website [5\u200a\u2014\u200aJim Marous in the Financial brand<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Siri\u2019s creators have been working on \u2018Viv\u2019 [6]<\/a> which is planned to be rolled-out in the next Samsung suite. Viv is based on 3 principles as described in Brian Roemmele\u2019s article [7<\/a>]: It will be taught by the world, it will know more than it is taught, it will learn something every day. The result will be a system that will ultimately predict your needs and allow you to almost communicate in the shorthand dialogs found common in close relationships.<\/p>\n

CES 2017 confirmed the trend with Alexa (Amazon) rising above rivals [8\u200a\u2014\u200aCES BBC<\/a>]. \u2018It\u2019s been loaded into robots<\/a>. It\u2019s escaped the house and made its way into automobiles<\/a>. It\u2019s even inside a smart fridge<\/a>. It\u2019s even coming to the Huawei phone<\/a>.\u2019<\/p>\n

However, from the perspective of the MIT Technology review, the next generation of Voice First leader is likely not yet known [9<\/a>].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Potential implications for banking?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In banking, USAA has been pioneering on this front for a couple of years piloting biometrics \/ voice as an interface early on. Most of the banks have implemented IVR (Interface Voice Response) or Voice Biometrics in telephony banking, but we are talking about a different game here.<\/p>\n

Voice First banking could be a step-change for:<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Voice commerce will become the primary replacement for advertising [7<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Voice Payments are the foundation to Voice Commerce [7<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Active, passive experience and conversational User Interface will strengthen the relationship with your bank<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Predictive analytics will help customers to be better off<\/p>\n

Voice is becoming the \u2018last inch\u2019 on the rise, its ascension may be the same than Logitech\u2019s share price when his CEO coined this expression. Voice-first will probably benefit from the implementation of the Open Banking APIs and the maturing curve of machine learning and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, let\u2019s not forget to have fun at home:<\/p>\n