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Capgemini digital leader on why conversational interfaces are going mainstream

Capgemini Digital Retail and Manufacturing Partnership Leader Genevieve Chamard shares insight on why voice and chat are fast becoming must-haves for retailers striving to meet consumer expectations and how conversational interfaces are revolutionizing the shopping experience.

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January 10, 2020 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com

Today's consumer wants a personalized experience and they want help wherever and whenever they need it. To that end more retailers are flipping on voice and chat technologies to meet that expectation and drive a more personalized and rewarding customer experience.

The tools are part of a growing number of conversational interfaces revolutionizing the shopping experience. So Retail Customer Experience reached out to Capgemini Digital Retail and Manufacturing Partnership Leader Genevieve Chamard to get deeper insight on what's driving conversational interface strategies and the data Capgemini gleaned from its recent study, "Smart Talk: How organizations and consumers are embracing voice and chat assistants."

The report analyzes how consumers interact with their voice/chat assistants and here are just a few key findings:

Looking ahead to 2022, for each activity across the consumer journey (from researching to purchasing the product/service), the consumer uptake of voice is expected to increase by 15% or more compared to today's levels.
53% of consumers have already used a voice assistant to buy products in 2019 against 35% in 2017, and 52% have interacted with a customer service via their voice assistant in 2019 vs. 37% in 2017.
70% of consumers, on average across sectors, have indicated that over the next three years they will progressively replace visits to brick-and-mortar stores, as well as to banks and automotive dealers with their voice assistants
76% of organizations across sectors have realized quantifiable benefits from their voice and chat initiatives.

Q. First off, thanks for taking time to share the study data and your insight. So, how would you describe the status of voice and chat assistants within the retail customer support/experience (infancy, nearly mature, etc.) and what is driving its adoption at this point?
A. Conversational interfaces, made of voice and chat assistants, are becoming mainstream. In fact, according to "Smart Talk," those conversational interfaces are becoming a staple in customers' lives:

74% use conversational assistants to research and buy products and services, create shopping lists, and check order statuses.
Around 58% use voice and chat assistants to play music, check for directions, make appointments for car service, and book rides on such platforms as Uber or Lyft.
53% use conversational assistants to learn about banking and insurance products, check account balances, pay credit card bills, and transfer funds.

It's noteworthy that customers are more comfortable using conversational assistants to complete more complex queries. Initially used to turn on lights in a room, play a favorite song or re-order items, they are now used to search products and conduct product comparison or even complete a purchase.

The growing adoption of conversational interfaces is due to three main factors:

Voice is both the most natural and complex way of interacting. We had to learn later in in life the language of computers and mobile phones. In comparison, speaking is innate to any human being.
Voice recognition is becoming more and more reliable. Already in 2017, Google was reporting being able to process natural language at the accuracy rate of 95%, comparable to the human accuracy threshold.
Conversational interfaces appeal to customers by their upmost convenience as 68% of consumers appreciate that it allows for multitasking and accomplishing tasks hands-free.

As a result, it's not surprising that over the next three years, 70% of consumers, on average, will replace their visits to the dealer, store, or bank with their voice assistants.

Q. What are some challenges retailers face with deploying or embracing such technology and are there any misconceptions about using such tools?
A. When all indicators point to the fact that conversational interfaces will become increasingly pervasive to customers' lives, retailers are slow to fully embrace the technology — 74% of organizations say that conversational interfaces are a key enabler of the company's business and customer engagement. They even have realized measurable benefits both operationally and customer-related.

However, less than half of retailers have deployed a conversational interface. Additionally, for the ones that have made the investments, only 27% truly master the technology. For the rest of their retailers, they mistakenly equate conversational interfaces with offering voice shopping on smart speakers (e.g. Google Home, Amazon Echo).

Q. A solid number of consumers are using voice assistants — when do you expect that figure to really grow to nearly saturation?
A. After a recent partnership with MIT we've actually predicted that by 2024 the market for smart speakers will have grown by 653% over five years, compared to a predicted growth of 286% for mobile phones. The study also estimated the smart speaker market to be valued at $13 billion. The following indicators are helping drive this rate of adoption:

Customers getting increasingly comfortable with conversational interfaces and are transitioning from handling basic queries to complex ones.
Retailers starting to realize they are missing out on an opportunity to directly engage with their customers and realize sizeable customer and operational benefits.
Technology providers (e.g., Google, Amazon, Microsoft) are slashing the prices of their smart speakers, are continuously investing in improving their voice/chat Al models, and are providing their technologies at a low cost to retailers in order to drive adoption.

Q. What are the top benefits of such tools — is it cost savings or is it enhancing the customer experience?

A. From my experience, I've found relatively comparable benefits for both cost savings and enhancing the customer experience. On the cost saving side, 70% of retailers saw more than a 20% reduction in customer service costs. Regarding customer experience, 88% of retailers were able to reduce customer wait time by more than five minutes, among other benefits.

Q. Oftentimes such technologies morph and get reinvented — so you see anything like that happening with voice and chat in the future?

A. I see less of a reinvention of the technology and more a seamless integration into our everyday interactions with devices. In this conversational interface revolution that I see already starting, winning retailers will be the ones who are customer centric at the core, achieve the right balance of human and bot-enabled interactions, and secure the right skills.

I see us commanding the devices of our house, cars and in stores/facilities from our voice. I can also see the generations to come preferring voicing their needs to their phones and computers as opposed to using the typing and touch features.

About Judy Mottl

Judy Mottl is editor of Retail Customer Experience and Digital Signage Today. She has decades of experience as a reporter, writer and editor covering technology and business for top media including AOL, InformationWeek, InternetNews and Food Truck Operator.

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