New research from the Capgemini Research Institute shows that consumers increasingly prefer to interact with chatbots. This is especially the case when it comes to researching products, getting to know new services and asking questions to the service desk after a purchase. According to Capgemini, nearly 70% of respondents expect to gradually replace a visit to a store or bank with a conversation with a voice assistant within three years.

For the report “Smart Talk: How organizations and consumers are embracing voice and chat assistantsmore than 12.000 consumers and 1.000 executives were surveyed. The assignment was to understand the perspectives of both consumers and executives on conversational interfaces, implementation and their satisfaction, building on the research that Capgemini performed in 2017.

Rollout lags behind

The research illustrates the pace of change in the past 1 to 2 years: 50% of the Dutch people who now use voice assistants only started doing so in the past year. Companies also see the benefits of conversational interfaces. They find chatbots and voice assistants critical to customer engagement and the overall customer experience. More than three-quarters (76%) of organizations surveyed say they have already realized tangible benefits from voice assistant initiatives, and 88% say these benefits meet or exceed their expectations. Benefits included a 20% reduction in customer service costs and a 20% increase in the number of consumers using digital assistants.

Despite the fact that these benefits for users and providers of chatbots and voice assistants are clear, the actual rollout seems to be lagging behind the enthusiasm and demand. For example, less than 50% of the top 100 players in the automotive, consumer products and retail, banking and insurance industries have voice assistants and chatbots.

A comparison between 2017 and 2019 shows an increasing use of voice assistants among consumers worldwide for various purposes, including buying products such as groceries (up from 35% to 53%), contacting customer service after a purchase (up from 37% to 52%) and making payments (increase from 28% to 48%).

Voice assistants

The report also shows that Dutch consumers are positive about the ability of voice or chat assistants to provide a better customer experience. For example, 71% are satisfied with personal voice assistants on their smartphone, such as Google Assistant or Siri. In addition, 62% are positive about voice-controlled speakers such as Google Home or Amazon Echo: this percentage is slightly lower worldwide (55%). Finally, 56% are satisfied with on-screen voice assistants such as Amazon Echo Show and Amazon Fire TV. Worldwide, this percentage is 48%.

More than two-thirds (68%) of consumers say a voice assistant enables hands-free multitasking and 59% say chatbots continue to improve personalization over time. The survey also found that people feel the need to personalize their voice assistants (52% in the Netherlands), for example by giving it a name (48%) and defining its personality (45%).

For more information please here view the full report.

Technology