Firms embrace voice assistants for customer-facing operations

Chennai: Increasing preference to voice assistants in searches is pushing consumer-facing companies to replace chat-bots with voice assistant features.

Travel tech company Ixigo is on its way to replace their chatbot Ixibaba to voice assistant TARA, that can now recognise Hindi and Hinglish. “Chatbots are becoming mechanical and act more like in a role play activity. We are trying to replace them with voice assistants that can understand misplaced grammar and accents as well and also make it more personalised,” said Aloke Bajpai, CEO and co-founder, Ixigo. Amazon’s Alexa recently added 1,000 skills, courtesy developers from India, post the launch last October. Local companies like Ola, Saavn etc have integrated with the assistant to provide voice-based activation of their services. Foodtech startup FreshMenu was one of the first companies to integrate the Alexa voice assistant in October when the product was first launched. Using the voice assistant, a customer can reorder the dish she had the last time or ask the assistant for a preparation with a desired ingredient. “Right now, the voice assistant can be used for ordering. We integrated with Alexa because voice technology is promising,” said Rashmi Dagga, co-founder, FreshMenu.

Chatbot companies such as Niki.ai are also now incorporating voice assistants on their platform to join the bandwagon. They feel that voice is a natural extension of text and with the tech giants offering their platform to developers, the growth is set to increase. “We have been experimenting with voice in the last 6-8 months. With 30% of our transactions happening using voice assistants, we are building a sales assistant. While voice assistants cannot replace chatbots, it is a natural extension,” said Sachin Jaiswal, co-founder and CEO, NIki.ai.

With ease of operations, voice assistants are seeing increased uptake. Firms add that stickiness of the customers using voice assistants is also close to 10-15% higher. A report by Retailers Association of India along with Capgemini says that 24% of all consumers are right now using voice assistant to search products, and in the next three years, this will rise to 40%.

Even as voice assistants are increasingly being used, customers and companies add that while a mix of visual and audio-based interface work better. “Functionalities like hailing a cab, listening to music or even news is easy, whereas hyperlocal usage like ordering food through the assistant becomes cumbersome. One is used to looking at a menu and our brain tends to forget the first option when the fourth is read out,” said Subrat Panda, an Alexa user.