Today, technology has become an important part of the business. For long term business success, implementing new technology is the key to be lead in the competitive market. McDonald’s acquires Apprente (a startup building conversational voice agents) to bring voice technology to the drive-thru to reinvent the fast food experience.
What is Apprente voice technology to Drive-thru?
Apprente company is specialized in building voice-based agents. It will help McDonald’s in taking orders in multiple languages and accents. McDonald’s has been testing Apparent’s technology in several locations and expects it will allow for “faster, simpler and more accurate order taking” at its drive-thru.
Why Voice technology is Adopted
According to MacDonald’s, it will not only low wait times but also allow restaurants to operate with a smaller staff. It can be used in mobile and kiosk ordering.
Voice technology will be used in creating a drive-thru to suggest the food tailored by things like the weather, current restaurant traffic, and trending menu items. Once customers have started ordering, the display can also recommend additional items based on what they’ve already chosen.
The Golden Arches said McD has tested Apprente’s technology at selected restaurants. It works as follows: you drive up to the menu board, speak to a voice-powered machine (just like ordering stuff from Amazon’s Alexa) to place an order, and drive up to the window to pick up the order.
Gone are the days of having to repeat your order five times into the drive-thru, which ultimately slows down the drive-thru lane. So, that’s a positive from a customer service and productivity standpoint.
Why your business should use voice tech.
1) To simplify customer experience:
“I think the main thing is providing the customer with the opportunity to use their natural language to get what they want,” Leary says.
Voice technology is faster than other types and enhanced client experience makes for more sales. The voice technology does away with the typing, clicking, and swiping through other types of customer service platforms.
The following companies integrated the voice technologies to simplify customer experience:
- At the CES 2018 in Las Vegas, Sony, TiVo, and Hisense unveiled smart home skills that integrated Alexa, enabling customers to control the TV by voice.
- “Hawaii Pacific Health, a not for a profit healthcare system with four major hospitals and 70 clinics statewide, focuses on providing the highest quality healthcare. As part of that effort, Hawaii Pacific Health improves its patients’ in-room experience by eliminating outdated nurse-call buttons and replacing them with natural conversations with Alexa. Patients use their voice to direct and control their in-room amenities, entertainment choices, and answers to many of their questions.
- Domino’S has announced it has partnered with google that allows customers to place and track the order via the google assistance. customers with google assistant powered products ( Google, Home, Pixel phone, etc) can order their favorite order and their last order via voice activation.
2) Work Processes become more efficient:
The following companies integrated voice assistants like Alexa and Google Home to improve their employee efficiency:
- Stonehenge company expert in investment management integrated with Alexa for business with salesforce by using AWS IoT to connect things within apartments, it helps them in creating an enjoyable and delightful experience and provide peace of mind to their tenants and employees in completely new ways.
- A Propel Insurance, US’s largest privately held insurance company integrated Amazon Alexa to ease the daily routine tasks of their employees like starting a meeting or joining the conference call. They integrated the voice assistant like Alexa, to make all the conference rooms voice-enabled. Employees loved the simplicity of the solution and how it makes their workday more productive.
3) Voice recognition software allows a business to put employees to better use:
The software can handle answering incoming calls and routing calls. It can enable a company to reduce staff and cut training costs. Many tedious job duties related to phone operations can be streamlined and simplified.
Valence: They built a private skill using Alexa for Business, called Valence Bot that can answer employee questions and handle requests related to the company. It is widely used by employees and they get a lot of positive feedback about what a unique benefit.
The industries can get the benefits of voice technology
- Banking and finance: Customers of banking sectors can take advantage of voice technology by performing various functions such as checking account balance, obtaining transactions, and even making payments. It can increase the level of security in banking as voice is biometric recognition to authentic genuine.
- E-commerce: we can use voice technology in e-commerce business as it will simplify the process of online shopping. By speaking products name or related keywords, customers can search the products, add the product in the cart, and complete the whole online process.
- Education: Integrating voice technology in the classroom can enhance learning and engagement. Teachers can effectively create online lessons and teach through video and students get access to these lessons quickly and effectively. At a time more students can learn by effective implementation of voice technology.
- Transportation: We can use voice technology for the transportation industry in various forms like companies can integrate voice-platforms that ease the booking process, and informing the customers related to the next available option, transport routes, timings, and more.
- HR and Marketing: In HR, Voice technology replaces all of the manual labor by simply asking a device to tell you about your upcoming work schedule. Similarly, marketing professionals can rely on voice assistants for easing up tasks like the creation of reports and scheduling posts.
Voice technology gives companies to take a competitive advantage in terms of customer experience and employee productivity. The best way to do so is to connect with an expert partner who can create high-quality voice recognition software for your business. Our team of expert business analysts and developers can help you achieve in increasing growth and efficiency using voice technologies. Connect with us to discuss how you can integrate voice technology into your current business.
