In the time of Google Home and Amazon Echo, the voice is it a new channel of serious purchase and then how to integrate it?
The pace of innovation of technology giants has allowed voice-activated virtual assistants, such as Google Home and Amazon Echo, to enter our homes almost overnight.
This technology is rapidly changing our buying habits – in some cases, by completely eliminating the search process associated with the purchase of a product. Amazon Alexa can now recommend its ” choice ” product to consumers and thus greatly simplify the purchase journey.
However, to date, very few brands and brands have developed their own features to take advantage of the growth of voice-controlled purchases.
If they do not consider the voice as a new, serious buying channel, alongside the Web, mobile technology and in-store, catalog and other purchases, they will miss out on huge revenue opportunities.
But what does voice-activated purchasing mean for sellers, who have historically invested huge sums to encourage consumers to pick up their products on the shelves?
What impact will this innovation have on the customer experience? And how can vendors fully integrate the voice with their other systems to ensure that it benefits their customers while boosting the growth of their brand?
The voice, a real challenge for the retailers
A voice query is a direct window to the consumer’s desires right now, as well as their opinions about a topic, service, or product. It also offers the convenience of being able to perform a search without interrupting its activities; users can make a query instead of typing it on a keyboard.
Like research, developments in voice technology are enabling marketers to develop more customer-focused engagement strategies through contextual data in real time.
However, this innovation creates several challenges for sellers.
The imperative need to appear at the top of the list
First, the voice search in e-commerce eliminates brands and almost completely strips marketing: the most frequently searched brands will be at the top of search engine results.
Therefore, marketing teams must ensure that when a user asks Alexa to add butter to their cart, their product will appear at the top of the list and will be purchased by the customer.
This involves making sure that customers know exactly which product to ask for, and that is an essential task for marketing.
And to integrate the voice with the other central systems
Secondly, voice requests will only provide useful personalized results, in the context and at the right time, if they are integrated with other data and knowledge from their entire profile.
This data must include location, browsing history, shopping habits, recent purchases, and brand affiliations.
It is therefore essential that sellers make sure to integrate voice with their existing systems, such as CRM and ERP platforms and logistics systems.
And above all to use the voice correctly
Last but not least, sellers need to think of a way to engage the customer in a two-way dialogue, to ensure that they can use voice search to get the most out of cross-selling or upscale opportunities.
This does not mean using the connected speaker to physically talk to customers. Instead, sellers need to think of ways to interest them in products different from those they normally buy, to ensure that they offer added value.
For example, if a voice-activated virtual assistant is connected to a coffee machine, the coffee brand supplying the coffee pods will know, thanks to the customer’s previous order history, which coffee flavors he likes; she may then send her a notification concerning a special offer when the machine begins to run out of coffee.
However, you can also use these notifications to inform customers about promotions and new products.
Signs and brands need to think about the best channel on which to post these notifications, to make sure they do not infringe on the privacy of their customers. The ability to record voice commands, but also to promote the same commitment later, by e-mail or through an application, is vital.
A “confidential” technology?
With the growth of connected speakers and voice search, brands and brands can not afford to ignore this channel of marketing and sales.
However, this technology will only succeed if it is integrated with existing data and systems, as well as promoting voice features, to ensure that customers order ” the right items ” and, in return, that the corresponding products are presented to them.
Although this technology may seem ” confidential ” at the moment, so was the Internet in its first steps; look at the turn of events for sellers who have chosen to ignore changing times …
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