It’s not hard to find people saying that
It’s a great slogan, because it is succinct, plausible . .. and confirmed by the experience of tens (hundreds?) of millions of us who talk to Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant every day. Talking to your phone or computer or car or that funny-looking cylinder- (or hockey puck-) looking thing on your coffee table is much easier, faster, and rewarding than banging on a keyboard or developing
Google gave away thousands of Home devices to developers at its 2017 I/O conference
All cool, all fun . . . but there are some serious implications for insurers. I’ve previously blogged about how
Putting these trends together, an insurer needs a Voice Strategy.
- Defining the identities, capabilities, and personalities of the voices it will use with its prospects and policyholders, its distribution and supply chain partners, and its staff.
- Creating a roadmap for the transition from text to voice -- building, deploying, and continuously improving its voices (while maintaining some legacy text UIs).
- Deciding when business cases are needed and when they are not. (Think about whether an insurer in 1999 needed a business case to build its first website – or whether it should have just done it.)
Building a Voice Strategy will take time and effort. If you need a break, take a look at a Star Trek movie, “The Voyage Home.” The crew of the Enterprise time travels back to 1986. Scotty has to fabricate a new form of plastic. He sits down in front of an early Mac and addresses it politely, “Computer? Computer?”Getting no response, someone hands him the mouse, which Scotty uses as a microphone, still no response. Finally someone tells him to use the keyboard. “How quaint,” says Scotty.
Note: Some of the ideas in this blog, and the term “Voice Strategy” came from a recent conversation with a Celent client. Thank you!
