Additionally, if your voice user interface is helping your customers interact with a device or product designed for a specific purpose—driving, refrigerating food, washing clothes, or providing TV content—they’re likely to expect the voice assistant to have specialized knowledge. If their queries are met with inaccuracies, they’ll quickly default to other means of interaction and abandon your voice assistant, maybe forever. 

Understanding context and intent a challenge for some voice assistants

As humans, we understand each other through words combined with the context of the situation to derive meaning. If someone asked you for a screwdriver at a bar, you wouldn’t hand them a tool, for instance. One of the reasons people use their smart speakers to simply set timers, get entertainment, such as music, or set reminders is the lack of context those voice assistants have to changing circumstances.

On the other hand, the success some brands have experienced with their voice user interfaces is likely due to the specialized knowledge and ability to understand the context and intent of the user. This level of accurate responsiveness is the result of custom voice assistant solutions built based on extensive user data and an understanding of customer needs and wants. 

Other technology, such as Deep Meaning Understanding™ allows users to continue the conversation without repeating information they already provided to the voice assistant. This type of technology allows the voice assistant to address multiple questions or those that contain a variety of modifications or negations. Since adults naturally speak in complex sentences that extend beyond simple command statements, a voice assistant that promises conversational intelligence must be at least as smart as the person they are talking to—if not smarter, if they expert the person to continue to engage.

In the near future, subject matter knowledge and the ability to understand context and intent will be supplemented by a voice assistant’s ability to understand the emotion of the user as well—creating truly personalized, conversational voice experiences.

Personalization and data privacy

Personalized voice experiences are among voice AI goals for many brands, despite the challenges of keeping data private for users. Brands hoping to bridge the gap between fears over security and the demand for better user experiences will need to make sure they communicate their privacy policies clearly to their users. 

In addition, there’s no substitute for asking permission to use data in order to improve user experiences. Those who are seeking more personalization and the convenience of a voice assistant that can anticipate needs and wants, will be happy to share their information with a company they have grown to trust. Other users may be content with a less personal experience and a little less convenience. Whichever a user chooses, the point is, it’s their choice, not the company that owns the voice assistant.

Companies hoping to build customer trust and loyalty won’t rush the journey to providing personalized voice experiences by skipping the opportunity to get permission and understand individual customer wants and needs. Truly personalized voice experiences will be a partnership between brands and users with an understanding that the company is providing the voice assistant as a service, not an intrusion.

Multilingual voice assistants serve a global market

If your voice assistant doesn’t speak the language of your users, you will never have an opportunity to create monetization opportunities, or even customer connections. Even if your customers can speak the language of your voice assistant, understanding accented language is an issue for many voice user interfaces and people tend to want to speak their native languages.

If you’re a global company and you’re thinking of launching a single language voice assistant to start, don’t make the mistake of making it available in all your markets. Target only those markets where your voice assistant speaks the primary language of your users. Then, as your voice experience improves and you add more languages, you can launch in the countries and regions where your users can be heard and understood.

Asking users to adapt to your voice assistant is a sure way to turn them off from your voice-enabled service or hardware product. Even if you did offer an iteration of the voice assistant in their native language later, the task of onboarding a disgruntled user is double the lift of getting someone to engage with a conversational assistant that understands them from the start.

Voice-first isn’t voice-only

In addition to voice, visual screens, the option to type or swipe, gesture and gaze recognition, thumbprint and facial recognition are all part of the new age of AI-enabled interfaces for a variety of purposes across industries. The voice-first era was never meant to supplant other forms of interaction, instead it is a way to offer more ways to access your hardware and services.

In a world of growing voice commerce opportunities, the more choices people have for how and when they will interact with your products and services, the more likely they’ll be to find proactive or responsive buying suggestions helpful.