How can speech recognition contribute to the success of your business?
How speech recognition technology is changing businesses for the better.
What was once a science-fiction inspired technology is now a modern business practice.
Voice recognition has been on the rise as an influential and important technology for several years. It started in consumer markets with customer service lines that asked you to state the reason for your call or use speech instead of telephone buttons to select an option.
This proved a disappointing experience for most customers, as the technology was not yet sophisticated enough. It took its place as a viable consumer technology with the Apple iPhone’s digital assistant Siri – users could ask for information and their device would recognize their voice and can provide them with more information, both audibly and on their screen.
Speech recognition technology has only become more accessible to both consumers and businesses. Here are some of the benefits of speech recognition software for both consumer and business facing applications.
Opportunity to Offer Services to a More Diverse Demographic
If businesses have speech processing technology built into their products, their product can become relevant to a wider group of people. For instance, many business apps currently require the ability for users to use their hands to some degree to interact with the application, but this can prove difficult for certain users with specific disabilities. Businesses who invest in advanced speech recognition technology have an automatic competitive edge over other businesses with less accessible products.
Speed and Ease of Use
Talking is still faster for most people than typing or crossing the room to complete a task. That’s why speech recognition has been integrated into digital assistants by Amazon, Apple, and Google. Giving a voice command is a faster way to complete a task – it’s easier to say “Hey Google, turn up the thermostat” than it is to get out of bed and turn it up. Voice commands being built into more and more smart devices means that the consumer experience is easier (again, with potential to break into underserved markets, as mentioned above) and brands benefit from that ease of use. There may even be potential for voice recognition to help different departments complete tasks faster at the business level.
Translation
Voice recognition allows for ease of communication between people of different languages. Speaking in a native language and having that processed by speech recognition software and then translated either audibly or visually opens up whole new opportunities for ease of communication. This can be helpful for global businesses to engage in more meaningful communications, easier, without the need for a translator. It also has potential applications for international hotels and business centers to help travelers overcome a language barrier and more easily access information they need.
Speech recognition systems might have to make some more technological progress before they’re practical in more applications and accurate and useful for everyone, but there is great potential for businesses to offer their customers a better experience, as well as places businesses can experience the benefits internally at their organization.
