Voice assistants, like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, offer marketers and researchers today a growing opportunity to engage with and empower consumers, patients, and fans.

Studies continue to show that, when we engage with brands via voice assistants, we feel a stronger, more personal connection with the brands. If you have already read part 1 of this three part series, you have a good foundation on what the landscape for voice assistants looks like today.

The next step in our guide is to give you some understanding of the kinds of voice experiences and voice applications consumers are engaging with, what they do great, and why they work so well. The goal here is to give you the understanding of what is possible so that you can better plan your voice strategy.

Let’s start by taking a look at the top use cases and ways you can leverage voice assistants in your projects and campaigns. 

Voice Surveys

A Voice Survey is the most practical and accessible kind of voice app because everyone knows what to expect from them. Consumers start your voice survey, hear your introduction, then you take them through the series of questions you’d like them to answer. What voice assistants offer marketers, that other methodologies for conducting surveys struggle with, is an opportunity for creating a deeper, more personal experience. The kind of personal touch that is usually reserved for in-depth interviews and focus groups can be achieved via voice assistants. 

What we have found at True Reply is that by personalizing a voice survey to your brand, creating more personable messaging and guiding participants through your voice survey using conversational tone, consumers experience a much higher level of connection with your brand and are much more likely to not only finish your survey but come back for more in the future. Completion rates for voice surveys are, as of the time of this writing, close to 97%. 96.8% of people who start a voice survey powered by True Reply complete the experience in its entirety. 

Voice surveys, executed properly, could help marketers and researchers reverse falling consumer participation and survey “burn out” - two issues that were discussed at length at SampleCon 2020.

Voice Tools

A Voice Tool is a voice experience that delivers some knowledge value or utility to the consumer. Online, web-based tools like “Your Debt Calculator” or “Your Romance Predictor” are common engagement tools that allow you to deliver consumer value while also building your engagement funnel. Voice assistants are a great platform for taking these types of experiences and amplifying both their utility and brand building potential. 

Take any topic, from insurance to wellness, and allowing consumers to learn about the topic, ask questions, and even book a follow-up with a live person creates tremendous value across brands and across industries. Give these tools a monthly, weekly or even daily “refresh” and you create an opportunity to deliver value at a very high convenience level and drive brand relationships at scale. 

Voice Entertainment

Delivering entertaining experiences via voice assistants is a growing space. Dynamic and engaging story telling, choose your own adventure, and trivia games are just a few examples of the kind of voice entertainment we’re seeing delivered as voice apps across voice assistants. You can bring your voice, and the voice of your brand, into the homes of millions and deliver highly interactive experiences that give consumers a fresh, new way of engage with your brand. 

Voice entertainment will help drive a whole new breed of experiences that is already taking hold. My youngest daughter has made Amazon Storytime a pre-bed ritual. She loves the ability and independence of being able to choose the kind of story she wants to hear and engage with the story in ways not otherwise possible. 

Voice Surveys, Voice Tools, and Voice Entertainment are the kind of voice apps that are most relevant to marketers and researchers today.

Let’s take a look at some voice experiences and what they did so well.

The Stephen King Library

“Stephen King is a master storyteller who has written more than 50 books. For a fun and entertaining way to find your next read open Stephen King Library.  You will answer a series of questions and receive a reading list of Stephen King books best suited to you.”

The Stephen King Library audio experience is a great example of a Voice Tool. The Stephen King Library voice app is available as a Google Action for Google Assistant as well as an Amazon Alexa Skill for Amazon Alexa. 

This voice app takes fans through a series of questions and then uses your responses to recommend a few books that align with your likes. Everything is wrapped up in sonic branding that aligns perfectly with the Stephen King brand creating a unique and engaging experience for fans that feels perfect. 

The Stephen King Library delivers value on both sides of the equation which is what makes it such a great example for marketers and researchers to learn from. On the consumer side, it’s created this “utility” that helps fans find their next great Stephen King read in a fun and entertaining way. Something to come back over and over again. For Stephen King, it creates a research opportunity to learn what fans like, their changing tastes over time, and learn from these things to deliver even greater value with the next book, movie, or voice experience. It even helps drive new readership as consumers who may not have read Stephen King before get a personalized recommendation to start with.

Home Experiences: My Clean Kitchen

Positioned as a point-of-experience Voice Survey, Home Experiences: My Clean Kitchen invites consumers to provide their opinion about the dish soap they are using - while they are using it. Voice assistants are perfect for this kind of engagement because the participant can be engaging in the action while providing their feedback in real-time. The Home Experiences voice app is currently available as an Amazon Alexa Skill for Amazon Alexa.

This Home Experience voice app is a great example of a Voice Survey that uses a personalized voice inline with the brand combined with conversational queues and tone to take the participant through a survey that feels less like a survey and more like a conversation with a friend - in this case - about that dish soap you’re using.

Home Experiences delivers value for the researcher in data collection while creating an experience for participants that is pleasant and leaves them actually happy about participating. It’s incredibly powerful to ask someone what they think about something and allow them to answer by talking. Voice-based interaction with a voice survey creates a more organic, open flow for the participant that can’t be matched by other mediums.

MyPetDoc

“Get answers to your pet health questions when you need them. MyPetDoc, the world's first veterinarian-driven AI, provides the answers you need. You'll have a straight-forward conversation with MyPetDoc first. Then, if you'd like more advice and guidance, you can speak with a US licensed veterinarian live. Veterinarians are available 24 hrs/day.”

The MyPetDoc voice app is a great example of a Voice Tool that delivers real value to pet owners. By answering few questions about your pets health and diet, you get quality guidance on what could be bothering your furry friend and the opportunity to book a live call with a veterinarian if the diagnosis is worrisome. MyPetDoc is currently available as an Amazon Alexa Skill for Amazon Alexa.

MyPetDoc delivers a ton of value to pet owners who may be worried that their pet is seriously ill and not sure what could be wrong or what they should do. Always available at the highest level of convenience, MyPetDoc delivers valuable information to pet owners, using just their voice. For Vet24seven, creators of the MyPetDoc voice app, the voice app delivers on-going value on the landscape of pet ailments, how pet owners describe their pets conditions, and the lead generation value of booking veterinarian consultations all via Alexa.

Amazon Storytime

“Explore a collection of more than a hundred short stories featuring lively full-cast recordings. Kids can choose from story categories including bedtime, silly, family, friends, and more. Or spin the magic story wheel for a surprise set of stories.”

Amazon Storytime is a great example of a Voice Entertainment voice app. The voice app is designed for kids from 5 years old to 12 years old and delivers stories in a multitude of topics. Sports, family, friends - and when the holidays come around you get holiday specific stories added too - Halloween, Christmas, Hanukah, and so on. When you start the voice app experience you get the option to choose between two random story types OR you can “spin the wheel!” to get another, random, topic suggestion. If you have one of the Echo Show’s, all this engagement has a visual and touch component that further amplifies the engagement experience.

This voice app is a wonderful example of Voice Entertainment that is super convenient to the user, highly engaging, and builds a long-term brand relationship.

The use cases and example voice applications I've shared above should help marketers and researchers better see how these voice experiences can fit into your projects, campaigns, and brand building endeavors. Adding voice as an additional channel of engagement for your current campaigns and projects doesn't have to be constrained by timelines, budgets, or resources. True Reply is designed for you to be able to quickly and cost-effectively add a voice strategy to your current marketing and research goals. We can power experiences just like the above examples as well as hundreds more.