The Customer Experience is the Key

Tomorrow morning, TuneIn CEO Richard Stern will take the stage as the opening keynote speaker at VOICE 2021. The summit will take place both in-person in Arlington, Va. and virtually, Dec. 7-8. In the lead-up to the event, he sat down (virtually) with Modev CEO and founder, Pete Erickson, to discuss the state of voice tech.

Something for Everyone

The discussion began with a quick rundown of COVID safety precautions to the core focus -- voice tech. Both Stern and Erickson agree, however, that Covid has augmented the audio space - connected devices, smart speakers, voice assistants - and accelerated its adoption as a mechanism to connect with audio content ubiquitously. For all of its pitfalls, voice tech saw a lot of growth during the pandemic. And it's not going away.

That growth created a tremendous opportunity for content creators and organizations looking to get into the voice space. They now know that they must evolve and provide today's customers with immersive, two-way experiences. And they know that can be achieved with the assets voice platforms offer.

As Stern says, "The advertising space and the interactivity around it is a new frontier. Brands and advertisers who subsidize these experiences don't just want one-way audio interactions. They're interested in how you can create a 'brand moment' through conversational AI."

He also feels that the success of conversational AI is in everyone's interest. To customers, it provides a better experience - one that's more targeted, more contemporary to their interests. For advertisers, it opens up exciting new possibilities to bring their brands to life in an environment that has been relatively flat and static for quite some time. It also provides them with a wealth of data about who's listening and what aspects of their product(s) are most intriguing or, perhaps, most misunderstood and need to be articulated more clearly.

The Customer Experience (CX) is the Next Revolution

As their conversation digs deeper into the customer experience, they tell us that digital marketers spend a long time trying to figure out how to target us as individuals. We're served ads that essentially talk to us through social media and other platforms. But what if we could carry that experience over to broadcast ads? Interactive broadcast ads have the power to unlock digital advertising's true potential while simultaneously improving the customer experience through relevance and interactivity.

Stern further tells us that when an advertiser releases a new ad, they have a goal in mind: something they'd like their customers to think or an action you'd like them to undertake. And because advertising is a one-to-many type of communication, you have to get to the lowest common denominator to justify the cost of those expenses. That's how we've characterized mass communication for decades. But that's about to change.

Imagine a voice-enabled platform, through which a car manufacturer serves an ad about one of their new vehicles, but where you, as a customer, can choose which aspects of the vehicle you're most interested in. If you wanted to know the available colors or the vehicle's fuel economy, you wouldn't need to click on the ad to be redirected to the website to get the information. Instead, you could simply ask, "what colors are available?" and get an immediate response. That experience would be extremely valuable to the customer because it is efficient, natural, and tailored to their interests.

Conversational AI is going to transform the customer experience. And those new customer experiences are going to ensure conversational AI's growth. As Stern tells us, "Being able to have conversations with your customers efficiently and at scale, using this tech is a tremendous asset that we will continue to cultivate in the coming years as an industry."

There is still time to sign up for a virtual pass to hear Richard Stern speak at VOICE 2021. View the schedule and join VOICE 2021 - the only conversation poised to shape the future of conversational AI, Dec. 7-8.