By Randy Malluk, Triad
Retail Media
Voice-enabled technology was the talk of the show at CES
this year, with Google and Amazon in a near arms race to own the market. It
seems as though voice assistants are everywhere, from the car and the home to the
workplace and of course, mobile devices. As Siri, Alexa and Google use the
power of AI to make everyday life more efficient than ever before, it is easy to
see how this technology can yield opportunities for advertisers, retailers and
brands. Harnessing voice technology is one of the leading ways today’s brands
can truly deliver a more seamless customer experience tomorrow.
These technologies have the power to provide data and
insights around customer behaviors that retailers otherwise wouldn’t have easy
access to. Instead of measuring traditional advertising data, voice technology
can pinpoint and measure the specific demographic data of the person interacting
with or searching for a brand, and their habits, such as search preferences and
attitudes towards a certain product.
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However, when it comes to the world of voice, the knowledge
around the context of a search is
what the game changer is for advertisers, brands and retailers. Views, clicks
and point-of-sale data cannot currently measure the context of a conversation.
Those data sets also can’t provide insight into the feelings that a consumer
has towards a brand or product. Voice search via digital voice assistants, on
the other hand, has this potential. This is because the data available from
voice is multi-layered — from preference and interest data (learned over time),
to natural language data such as verbal cues like pitch, tone, speed, and
volume — which ultimately lead to sentiment and ultimately, context.
Context is
what’s critical for retailers and brands to be able to make sense of all this
voice data because it is what will eventually enable them to personalize
advertisements based on the customer’s needs. This is what will truly differentiate
one platform from the other, and will create a new core consideration for brands
that want to fit voice-enabled technology into their marketing strategies.
So where does the retail customer experience fit in? All of
this data and contextual information collected through voice search provides
retailers with the information necessary to guide a customer seamlessly through
the shopping journey. Through the power of natural language processing and AI, voice
assistants can measure and recognize the context of a conversation or
interaction. Is the user asking about a brand with a negative tone in their
voice? Are they inflecting a positive tone, meaning they need something for a
happy reason? It’s this exact contextual information that marketers will be
able to look to, and in turn deliver a personalized voice search experience
that gets the customer the product or information they are truly seeking.
While there are widespread concerns in every industry around
the impacts that AI and machine learning will have in terms of removing humanity
from the customer experience, this technology will likely do the exact
opposite. A technology that can consider and adjust to the context and
sentiment of a consumer will undoubtedly do wonders in bringing humanity back to
the world of advertising. Sentiment and context are just a few of the
cornerstones that make up the human element. They bring us together and give us
a truer understanding of one another. It is this ability to connect and
understand that will drive the adoption of voice technology in the industry,
and it will radically change the customer experience. Is your brand ready?
Randy
Malluk joined Triad Retail Media in 2016 as SVP of Analytics & Insights.
In this role, he relies on his extensive industry expertise to lead three key
growth areas: business intelligence, data science analytics and marketing
insights. In addition, Malluk is responsible for driving high client campaign
performance with cutting-edge analytics and actionable insights that optimize
digital marketing effectiveness to fuel growth and performance. Specializing in
advanced customer segmentation, targeting, testing, optimization and the
application of world-class analytics products, he leads the company’s
strategy for establishing and maintaining partnerships with industry vendors to
enhance and refine Triad’s intelligence platforms and reporting capabilities.
