Chatbots and Voice Skills

chat vs voice skills

The big difference between Chatbots and Voice skills is the way people interact with them.

What are bots? chatbots and voice skills? Why are they important?

A bot is a software application that is programmed to do certain tasks. A bot may be of various types. Bots are mostly automated.

A chatbot is a computer program that lets people interact with technology using a variety of input methods such as voice, text, gestures 24/7 365.

A text-based chatbot is the one that interacts and communicates through text or messaging. This may involve media, such as videos and images.

Voice-activated chat-bots or voice skills are the one that interacts and communicates through voice. They accept the command in an oral or written form and reply through voice.

                                     Chatbots and voice skills

        

A differentiation: Chatbots and Voice skills

Bots can be categorized into two types- one which via text and voice together and the other, which only responds via voice. The most famous example of voice-enabled chatbots is the Amazon Echo and Google Home.

For several years chatbots were normally used in customer service environments but are now being used in a variety of other roles within enterprises to improve customer experience and business efficiencies. Chatbots are becoming more and more popular as a means to help and assist users with their difficulties and pain points. Chatbots and conversational marketing are enabling companies to make great strides in improving customer service.

                                         chatbots and voice skills

Chatbots and Voice Skills : Why are they in trend?

Recognized and identified by a variety of different names such as a conversational AI bot, AI assistant, intelligent virtual assistant, virtual customer assistant, digital assistant, conversational agent, virtual agent, conversational interface and more, chatbots are growing in popularity.

But just as chatbots have a variety of different names, they also have varying degrees of intelligence.

One major difference between a chatbot and a voice skill is its accessibility. Text-based chatbots are remarkably effective and efficient. They swiftly sense the need of users and provides them with instant solutions. In addition, the chatbots assist in gathering feedback and keeping the customers engaged by solving their queries quickly. Currently, these types of bots are most commonly used by businesses to handle their customer interactions. They can be easily merged with social media, messaging apps and platforms, emails and much more.

For example, Slackbot is slack’s built-in text-based chatbot (i.e.) service support system. Slackbot is a type of app designed to interact with users via interaction. But, it’s only advanced conversational AI chatbots that have the intelligence and capability to deliver the sophisticated chatbot experience most enterprises are looking to deploy.

Alexa is an example of an advanced voice assistant. Other assistants, like Bixby, Siri, Cortana, and Duplex, are all commercially available today but don’t yet have the same capabilities. Chatbots, too, are increasingly common, and, are often used by companies to handle customer questions, complaints, and interactions.

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Most modern chatbots and voice skills are simple programs that are made to provide timed responses to specific statements. So, they have varying preferences when it comes to integrating chatbots for customer support. Some require a voice-activated bot whereas some require text-only bots.

In this article, we will have a look at the strengths and weaknesses of each medium (voice and chat) to help you decide between the two and extend the best experience to your customers.

Bots & Voice-activated Assistants in Marketing

More consumers are leaving email and migrating to social media to keep up with their favorite brands, which has created an ideal environment for companies to experiment with implementing voice intelligence that can improve the customer experience. 

Mostly, businesses use these bots to handle customer questions and complaints. Customers like them because, unlike traditional customer service representatives who may leave the users waiting on hold for an hour, chatbots and voice assistants respond speedily and efficiently to common requests and questions. 

Businesses prefer them: 

  • Because they don’t have to pay an hourly wage to a bot.
  • Quicker responses help keep customers happy with the speedy resolution of issues and hence eventually result in more business and a boost to the top line.

Here’s a look at how some brands are using this voice-activated technology to boost awareness and customer engagement:

  • Information Sharing

A brand known to any whiskey lover, Johnnie Walker, recently collaborated with Amazon to release an Alexa skill that helps people be their own bartender. The “skill” (similar to an app) shares cocktail recipes, tells stories from the brand’s history, guides customers through personalized tastings, and recommends different blends based on preference.

This voice-powered form of content marketing makes it possible for Johnnie Walker to share their knowledge of whiskey and build their brand authority through a one-on-one experience that would not be possible to do at such a large scare without technology.

  • Analytics

Navigating marketing analytics can be tricky, especially for those who don’t deal with it often. Google introduced voice search for Google Analytics that helps users to easily access the data they’re looking for without having to scour the dashboard. It’s a splendid tool, especially from an agency perspective, because it allows marketers to very easily access and conveys data to clients or other marketing decision-makers.

  • Voice search and optimization

As people become more comfortable with using voice assistants, more and more search queries are done through voice-enabled search. When people search using words spoken aloud, their speech tends to be more natural than what they would type into a search box. (For example, you’d say, “Alexa, where’s the nearest gas station?” vs typing “gas stations near me” into a search engine.) As a result, businesses will need to adapt their SEO strategy to voice search (stay tuned for more on this in a future post) in order to keep themselves relevant in search results.

So, deciding between a voice-activated and text-based chatbot greatly depends upon your business requirements.If you are confused between the two, try to answer the following questions.

  • Who are your target customers?
  • What are the objectives of your target customers?
  • What are the objectives of your business?
  • Where do these objectives intersect?

Businesses that may opt for Text-based Chatbots

To help you out further, we have listed certain parameters based on which your company may opt for a text-based chatbot.

The advantages of having a text-based chatbot

  • Available 24×7 – When you have a target audience who are constantly on the go, you can opt for a text-based chatbot for your business. This way, your customers can start interacting and exploring your offerings at their own convenient time.
  • Can handle multiple customers seamlessly 
  • Saves money for the business by handling the tasks of customer service agents.If you have a small business that is not very diversified, a text-based chatbot is ideal for your needs.
  • Relatively better customer satisfaction as the resolution to issues is immediate 
  • Can handle repetitive work without losing efficiency

In case your business requires a screen presence at all times, you will require a text-based chatbot. This will allow you to assist your customers with things they require during an interaction.

Businesses that may opt for Voice skills

  • Ease of input – Commands via voice. Owing to their instructiveness and ease of input, voice-activated apps are also quickly gaining prominence. 
  • Voice technology is natural and multi-lingual
  • Saves time- Businesses can make use of voice-activated apps as it’s fast and saves time
  • Get ahead of the competition-This is a great opportunity to put your voice app ahead of your competitors and make your company stand out.
  • Allows users to interact with your app hands-free – Voice-enabled apps give users the ability to interact without using their hands. The customers can easily interact with your app while traveling from one client to another.
  • Opportunity to move beyond screens –Voice enablement presents businesses an opportunity to make their apps accessible even without screens (i.e.) where the users will become less dependent on their screens to get their work done.
  • Better accuracy
  • Increased productivity and reduced training time
  • Can act as a personal assistant based on its application design. Ex: Google Duplex, Amazon Alexa

Key takeaway

Both text-based chatbots and voice skills have their own pros and cons.

Once the business requirements are determined and the kind of user experience you wish to build, choosing the most suitable type of chatbot will become a lot easier and you will be able to find out which type of chatbot to get developed.

The remarkable part about a chatbot and voice assistants continues to be that they can be combined with multiple apps to bring one awesome experience into reality. 

Eventually, users always need a much-improved customer experience and the ability for brands to be conversational. A voice assistant experience for the customer will be much smoother, which will be a win-win situation for stakeholders, the businesses and the ultimate consumer.

Feel free to reach out to the VOGO VOICE team and it would be great to engage with you in realizing the strength of voice-enabled apps. VOGO voice is a voice skill builder with almost 2 years of experience in voice app development on multiple projects. 

If you have ideas, we’ll be glad to help you implement them.

                               chatbots and voice skills

VOGO Voice designs and builds engaging voice skills for industries including education, civic, transportation, business, and nonprofits using our robust voice user interface platform that allows data integration and in-depth customization. VOGO Voice build you the best of class voice app that is compatible with both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Get in touch with our professional team today to hand your citizens, customers, and workforce a high-definition voice-activated solution to keep pace with their demand.