Make people feel successful

Frustration is the adversary to motivation. People don’t want to feel like failures and when they do, they may blame the voice assistant. The frustration scenario with voice assistants is pretty familiar. Someone asks for something and gets an incorrect answer or “I didn’t understand that”, or “I didn’t find that” response from the voice assistant.

The situation escalates to the user raising their voice and repeating the command—even though louder speech rarely improves comprehension. When the request fails again, the user can resort to name calling or simply giving up, and the moment to create a positive connection between the user and the voice assistant is lost. That person will be less likely to go to the voice assistant for the same type of request again.

Improvements in voice AI technology are increasing the accuracy of responses, especially in instances where voice assistants are customized and equipped with speciality domains that understand the context, lexicon, accents, and languages of its users. The challenge for companies employing these advanced voice assistants is overcoming the pre-conceived notion of what voice assistants can do and how to interact with them.

Using the power of positive reinforcement, voice AI designers can create onboarding programs that orient users to expect rewarding experiences. Keeping in mind the psychology of user behavior, voice assistant onboarding journeys should make it easy to get started.

From there, a series of early wins followed by a reward for a successful attempt will begin to condition users into feeling successful—increasing the possibility of more frequent interactions in the future.

Form the habit of engaging with the voice user interface

The goal with voice assistant onboarding strategies is to create habit forming behaviors that keep users engaged on a regular basis and anxious to return for more. 

Applying human psychology and the gamers’ perspective, five elements emerge as keys to forming user habits that result in increased engagement and satisfaction:

1. Simplicity and choice
2. Fast delivery and personalization
3. Engaging the conscious and unconscious
4. Positive feedback
5. Achievement and FOMO

Simplicity and choice

Getting started with a voice user interface should be so easy a child could figure it out. Push a button or utter a wake word or wake phrase and the interaction should start immediately. When the user stumbles and doesn’t ask for something immediately, the voice assistant can suggest something simple, like: “You can ask me to turn on the lights or navigate to your destination.” 

Success with this first interaction provides reassurance that using the voice assistant is simple and reduces the friction that fear of failure creates. Choice and the feeling of being in control is what sustains the feeling of happiness. According to a 2011 report in Psychology Today, the number one contributor to overall happiness is the sense of autonomy and feeling in control. 

In voice assistant applications, there are a number of ways to give users a sense of control. Allowing them to ask for things the same way they would talk to another human is one. Multi-modal interfaces is another. While voice-first may be your goal, voice-only should never be part of your roadmap.

Fast delivery and personalization

The advent of mobile apps and the immediacy of internet search results has created a certain level of impatience when interacting with technology. Acknowledging the need for users to get what they want, when they want it, without having to navigate exhaustive menu options, provides a sense of instant gratification.

Increasing engagement is achieved by delivering the reward faster and eliminating the effort required to get the reward—not by delaying satisfaction and trapping users into staying with the system longer. Gamers know this. The increased use of the voice assistant occurs when customers return time and again to satisfy their immediate needs.

Once the challenge of delivering a fast and accurate response is solved, voice AI designers need to seek the “wow factor” that builds the reliance on the voice assistant. Do you offer points for engagement? Power user status that unlocks something of value? Specialized notifications? Loyalty points toward future purchases? 

Gamifying the onboarding process requires that users understand from the beginning that their continued engagement will result in a variety of experiences that are worth sticking around to discover.

A game of conscious and unconscious decisions

Creating a user’s journey that begins with easily completing simple tasks and builds to providing more challenges and rewards is critical to gamification psychology. Giving too much too soon can be both frustrating and overwhelming for the user.

The goal for user engagement is that the person interacting with your voice assistant does so at both the conscious and subconscious levels. While we may believe we are making decisions based on logic and reason, our subconscious emotions are playing an influential role. Connecting emotional reactions to your voice assistant by carefully choosing the tone and quality of voice, making the user interface visually appealing in mulit-modal environments, and creating pleasing notification sounds all contribute to a positive subconscious experience for the user.

The combination of a pleasing auditory and visual experiences and positive rewards delivered at varying intervals and in various ways combine to create a level of dependence on the voice assistant..

Positive feedback

Along with other rewards, giving users positive feedback at every stage of their voice assistant journey increases levels of user satisfaction. Dopamine is the feel-good neurotransmitter. The same chemical that is linked to pleasure-seeking behavior, is also linked to learning processes.Teaching your users to interact with your voice assistant is easier when doing so stimulates the pleasure centers in their brains. Keeping it interesting enough with higher levels of usage and unlocking more experiences creates a stickiness with the voice assistant beyond its functionality.

The concept of positive feedback is simple. Executing it in the voice assistant will take some finesse. While you don’t want to always state, “Good job” to your users after successfully interacting with your voice assistant, you can provide feedback in other ways.