How Voice Assistants Are Boosting Business Productivity

Voice assistants are growing in popularity with each passing day. They're fun and convenient, and there's a "science fiction-y" satisfaction to making things happen using only your voice. And while it's pretty uncontroversial to say that voice assistants are used in a growing number of contexts, some of the tech's use tends to fly under the radar.

That may have to do with how we marketed AI-powered voice tech in the early days. Indeed, its marketing was very much geared towards the convenience it could bring to the individual user. So it focused on things like turning on the lights, playing a song, ordering food, etc. But between then and now, the tech has grown in sophistication. And its use has expanded beyond individual users and has been successfully implemented within many businesses. And while voice assistants may garner less attention within that context, it's helped many companies make productivity and efficiency gains on many fronts.

So in this post, we're going to highlight the top four ways voice assistants boost business productivity.

Communication

 It's no secret that the pandemic has redefined work, and it's becoming more global and remote. Despite that, most communication occurs over "traditional" messaging apps, like Slack. And while these apps can overcome the distance barrier, they don't facilitate communication within multilingual workforces. On the other hand, voice assistants can completely overcome the language barrier. Users can configure their voice assistant to translate their speech/text on the fly and deliver the translated results to the intended recipient. That's pretty amazing, and the benefits to organizations with workforces spread across different continents are clear.

Multilingual voice assistants can help you interact with your employees and customers worldwide. Voice assistants enable you to bypass the language barrier, make more meaningful connections with your customers - wherever they may be - and simplify multilingual communication within your workforce. All that translates to a more personal experience for your customers and growth for your business and brand.

Analytics

Data is a voice assistant's food. Voice assistants need data to function, and they can ingest and analyze vast swaths of data. As a contemporary business, your daily operations and interactions generate tons of data - data that you need to analyze for insights that will help guide future business decisions. You already know this.

So instead of trolling through all that data manually, have your voice assistants do it for you. You can use simple voice commands to run analytical queries over massive data sets, enabling you to filter the data and break it down by events, departments, functions, date ranges – whatever you need - all by only using your voice.

Customer Service

Customer service was one of the first industries to get on board with voice assistants because the benefits were so obvious. And the marriage between the two has been an enormous success so far.

Many call centers have started integrating voice assistants into their support infrastructure to enhance the work of their live agents. By using voice assistants as their first line of support, organizations can make impressive efficiency gains. If the caller's questions/requests are simple enough, they can be handled end-to-end by the voice assistant. If the voice assistant cannot complete the customer request independently, it can create a ticket from the request to be resolved by an agent.

And if the caller's request requires them to speak to a live agent, the voice assistant can assess the caller's needs and transfer them to the appropriate agent/department. This removes low-value tasks from your representatives' plates, allowing them to focus on high-value tasks where their expertise is required. 

Voice assistants also enable your organization to provide 24/7 support to your customers for anything that doesn't require a live agent with minimal cost. It's no wonder customer service was so quick to jump on the voice bandwagon.

Time Management

This one will be of no surprise to anyone who has ever used a voice assistant. Tracking time, setting reminders, creating to-do lists, etc., are all facilitated with voice assistants. And this translates to productivity gains in the workplace. Your workforce will be significantly more productive if they don't have to deal with minutiae on a daily business. Not only that, but humans can forget, our attention span can dwindle, and some things inevitably end up falling through the cracks. Not so with voice assistants.

Voice assistants can be particularly beneficial in more complex organizations with multiple teams working on numerous projects at once. The time management features of voice assistants can simplify and streamline planning and implementing projects with each team member involved. By taking care of all the redundant tasks associated with tracking projects, setting deadlines and reminders, and scheduling tasks/meetings, voice assistants help you to focus your workforce and foster innovation while keeping operational costs down.

Wrap-Up

So those were the top four ways voice assistants boost productivity in the workplace. But there are more - to be sure. And as AI-powered voice tech continues its unstoppable march forward, we'll find even more use cases for the tech. 

It's also safe to assume that decentralized workforces will continue to make inroads to the point of becoming the norm in the not-so-distant future. That, in turn, will transform voice assistants from a convenient novelty into a critical part of every organization's business infrastructure.

The future is vocal.

Modev

Modev was founded in 2008 on the simple belief that human connection is vital in the era of digital transformation. Modev believes markets are made. From mobile to voice, Modev has helped develop ecosystems for new waves of technology. Today, Modev produces market-leading events such as VOICE Global, presented by Google Assistant, VOICE Summit the most important voice-tech conference globally, and the Webby award-winning VOICE Talks internet talk show. Modev staff, better known as "Modevators," include community building and transformation experts worldwide. To learn more about Modev, and the breadth of events and ecosystem services offered live, virtually, locally, and nationally - visit modev.com.