Imagine a workplace that continuously adjusts based on machine algorithms and personal inputs, where the system automatically adapts to specific preferences and moods for you and your colleagues. With major tech companies investing heavily in AI-driven and interactive digital assistants in an effort to make our lives more convenient, voice technology has shown significant impacts for businesses around the world. Here’s what you need to know.
The Rise of Voice Tech
In 2017, the research company SAR Insight & Consulting released a study that estimates 2.2 billion digital assistants have shipped in 2017, and by 2022 that number will increase to 3.6 billion. Some of the best smart home devices of 2018, like Microsoft’s Cortana or Google Home, have grown in popularity and not only shape how people interact at home, but also in various offices that are future-centric, integrating technology in various daily activities. As big tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft compete over the voice space, here the main reasons why voice technology is important to keep track of:
Changes in Employee Dynamics
As companies move towards pairing work with voice-first technologies, employees have new ways of becoming more engaged, more productive and less stressed throughout the workday. Work environments will shift progressively and with a few simple voice commands, employees can connect with the people and applications they need.
Shifting Corporate Identities
Machine learning algorithms working behind the scenes automatically set a series of pathways and tools for employees. By utilizing advancements in natural language processing, voice technology will convert words to text, and become an integral part of an organization’s memory that can then be searched, analyzed, and added to over time.
Open Platforms for the World
According to Kevin Roberts, a GM at Financialforce.com, one of the telltale signs of the growing influence of voice is the overall pace of transparency in the workplace. With Amazon Lex and Microsoft Cortana open to developers, it will be simpler to create tasks for learning and programming recognition for a variety of behaviors, needs, and patterns. New smart devices will learn from user habits and pick up on behavioral and environmental patterns in order to make experiences more predictive.
How Voice Impacts The Workplace
Amazon is one company that seeks to make it easier for Alexa to integrate with users’ lives and views voice-command as the next wave of accessing technology for work. With Alexa Skills for Business, users can use digital assistants to perform tasks such as starting video conferences or printing documents. These necessary actions are completed through a simple voice-activated sequence accessed through Amazon’s Echo digital speakers and incorporated into workplace software. Here are a few other ways voice impacts the way people work:
Personal Security and Leisure
Use of voice technology can be seen at the personal level in day-to-day activities. You can use Siri to request a weather update or call someone in your contact lists. You can update Alexa to put on tunes from Spotify and ask Google Home to adjust your home’s temperature.
Voice recognition software is now the next step to a more secure form of protection since, like our fingerprints, our voices are unique. The voice recognition firm Nuance for HSBC mentions that it is almost impossible to recreate all the characteristics used in the voice ID, so you can be sure for a more secure level of access.
Operations and Systems Management
A swift simplification of business tasks may overcome workspaces, where it will be easier to do mundane tasks such as search databases, check the status of deliverables, run or analyze reports, and respond to business inquiries. Most general tasks may be fully replaced with AI versions of secretaries and administrators, implementing new interactions in how employees acquire and use data in their workflow. Imagine having the ability to transcribe all your meetings and pull out the key points into working drafts which you can hand off to other stakeholders (a possible scenario according to Timothy Chaves of ZipBooks).
Automation and Connection
With Alexa’s growing skills in the workplace, many voice-activated apps create bridges for employees to get things done more efficiently. Alexa currently offers tools that could be useful to enterprise workers either in the office or at home, such as an app to check phone messages and make calls or a digital “butler” that keeps track of inventory for you.
Some digital assistants, like the ili, use AI and pattern recognition to quickly help when crossing speech barriers between people who speak different languages. Voice technology may reach over to the CRM, where voice interfaces become the standard method for sales and service reps to interact with customers. Organizations that fine-tune voice-driven processes that involve capturing and analyzing conversations will get better in analyzing their market share and resolve issues in their current process.
In the future of the developing workplace, voice technology will need to offer a mix of productivity and compelling user experience. Companies must reach a more human experience with their voice AI’s, and develop a system to talk people through their issues using the right amount of efficiency, compassion, and humor.
