But the nuance of ChatGPT is that it’s not really ready for an unsupervised runtime experience. And what I mean by that is, you would never put a generative AI tool like ChatGPT directly in front of your customer, and expect it to be right all the time, or even be contextually accurate. And the reason being is because you don’t have control over that. With conversational AI platforms like Voicify, there is a sort of hybrid responsibility between the artificial intelligence and a human resource that manages the training of that API. When you log into ChatGPT, you should notice that one of columns of introductory language they give you is a warning that ChatGPT is not always accurate and, in fact, could be harmful or dangerous. There’s not a lot of enterprises that I deal with, no enterprises I deal with, that are willing to accept that risk. We actually integrate with GPT and other generative AI platforms. That tool is really useful for the creative process. It’s a helpful way of generating very specific content, but it needs to be reviewed, curated and approved as part of the training model against a specific AI. And that’s what Voicify does.

Dave Cowing

I love that separation of how curated a voice experience is and certainly the risk side of generative AI, I know of no organization that wants to open up an unfettered, highly risky conversation with a customer that they can’t manage.

Q: Pivoting a little bit, a lot of people today think about checking the weather or ordering dog food via Siri or Alexa, but voice is so much more. It’s come a long way. What are some of the more compelling use cases you’ve seen for voice?

Jason Fields

Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa all did a really good job of laying a strong foundation of training with human beings about what was possible. So a lot of people are still used to those really rudimentary use cases. And some of them are very useful: turning up the thermostat, turning down the volume. These are helpful things as you’re walking around your house or in your vehicle even. But the business value and the customer value has accelerated well beyond the capability of those domain specific tools

A couple examples that come to mind are Houston Methodist, in Texas, which is actually implementing a voice assistant in their surgical theaters. That is to play into a sterility need that those environments demand. When you speak to a voice assistant or are prompted from a voice assistant to perhaps go through a series of processes and protocols, or to take notes or to confirm that certain steps have been done, you’re necessarily not touching things, which is really important when you’ve got somebody open on the table. They’ve extended that use case into patient rooms, where the assistant can be present on a mobile device of some kind (tablet, computer, phone), where the assistant can be helpful in conversations between doctors and patients both at a very rudimentary level, taking notes, but also in a very helpful way of surfacing information that the parties are speaking about that might be helpful or relevant and in ensuring accuracy of information or accuracy of comprehension by both parties. Obviously, that latter one needs to be opted into by the patient. A really a really great use case in a nontraditional consumer area.

One of the other ones that comes to mind is a client of ours named Odyssey. They’re the second largest radio station owner in the United States. They launched, as part of a rebrand, a new mobile app about nine months ago or so and they put a voice assistant as part of their user interface in that app. This allows them to dramatically cut down on the visual interface demands, the cognitive demands, on the user in order to tap and swipe and click through the interface to get to what they’re trying to listen to, or find out about. Instead, they can use their voice to drill down very specifically to what they’re looking for. And the assistant executes on their behalf in the app to bring that information.

The next one is more of a business use case, but I can’t use brand names in this one. A number of fortune 500 companies who have warehouse operations are seeing a real benefit in bringing a voice assistant into those warehouse environments, where their workers are typically carrying around some sort of mobile tablet or mobile device in order to manage information back and forth to the backend systems that could be doing things from arranging pickup orders from workers, organizing delivery schedules of trucks to the warehouse or simply surfacing information to managers. The combination of a few technologies, voice user interface, conversational AI, even NFC and augmented reality with visual capabilities is bringing a much safer work environment. The business case for these organizations is pretty straightforward. If you can decrease the number of accidents that happen in that environment, your insurance premiums go down. And that’s a real cost when you’re working at scale with warehouses all over the globe.

Dave Cowing

I really love looking at these institutional applications of voice and how they can help companies either drive increased efficiencies or driving reduced accidents.

When I look at financial services, I see some of the potential pain points voice could solve based on some of your descriptions. I think one area is in customer service and call centers. In looking at how you can handle the ongoing labor shortages combined with the always on expectations of consumers and businesses for 24/7 access, voice will be a fantastic way to both meet some of the labor shortage needs as well as the other stress of the always on expectation.

Similarly, I can see in the wealth management space where you’ve got financial advisors that have expertise and access to a lot of data on their customers’ accounts and investments, being able to provide deeper access and maybe easier access than a traditional web or mobile app might provide. The advisor can ask questions and drive analysis (e.g. what’s my exposure to a particular industry in my portfolio) without having to navigate or expect prepackaged reports. I love where this is going and how it can drive business advantage across domains.

Jason Fields

I think some of the same patterns that we see with the big boys of Alexa, Google and Siri, or Apple, putting their voice assistants in market to do general training of society on how they can be used, you’re also now seeing with like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and US bank. They’re doing a lot of use of voice UI and conversational AI, with their consumer banking applications. What they’re doing, whether consciously or not, is they’re training a big swath of their consumer base about this capability. And as those consumers grow older, acquire more wealth, their expectation is not going to dwindle. But this capability should follow them into those maybe smaller but more intimate experiences with their financial services organization.

There’s also a huge advantage for financial services when you consider how significant the market opportunity is for people with disabilities or accessibility issues. There’s like 29 million underbanked, or unbanked people in our country alone, that have a difficult time engaging with mobile apps, websites, and aren’t comfortable going into the branch because of their disability or accessibility issue. And bringing a voice user interface and conversational AI into digital tools that are already available to them can make them more comfortable with engaging, which is a real market opportunity for that space as well.

Dave Cowing

A lot of people think of accessibility as addressing, at least in financial services, regulatory requirements, or better serving existing customers, both which are important. But with those numbers that you’re talking about, the ability to extend and broaden a bank’s market is huge. These are people that need or want services, so figuring out the right channels and the right products to get to them could translate to real business value.

Q: We’ve seen across all of the big evolutionary shifts in technology, that it brings disruption. What do you see as some of the likely avenues for this disruption? And what is the impact on companies that are that haven’t really got started?

Jason Fields

I think the most obvious advantage to bringing conversational AI into any space and FinServ specifically is the ability to bring a multimodal experience to life. Accessibility can be a good reason, but a lot of research has been done that shows that people who don’t fall into that accessibility spectrum also benefit, and actually prefer, to be able to engage with their brands in a number of different ways. And right now, by and large, though web and mobile, and even kiosk is rising in person experiences, you’re limited to a visual screen that you have to manage and deal with. Although I think the practice of user experience and user interface has grown leaps and bounds in the last 20 years from when I first started in technology, at the end of the day, you are still depending on the end user to be able to understand and comprehend the navigation and management interface that somebody else put together for them. When you bring voice UI and conversational AI, as a companion interface to the existing visual interfaces, thus creating a multimodal experience, you’re saying to your to your base that we’re here not just to try to make things easier the way we think about things, but we’re here to actually make things easier based on how you think about things. And that’s not only a really important message to tell the markets. It’s also a really easy way to gain stronger brand affinity. So, I think what you’ll see is from an ease of use standpoint, companies like Bank of America and Wells Fargo, specifically in the financial services space are generating a competitive moat that over time is going to be very difficult for other organizations to narrow.

Dave Cowing

That’s really interesting. The notion of providing both multiple modalities and the optionality so that customers can go and use the modality that’s most natural for them is critical. If I go back to something you said earlier, this notion of training, that we as a society are kind of going through the sort of learning curve, like we did with the internet and mobile, on how to use this, and as these skills grow, it’s only going to climb and the companies that are there early will have a distinct advantage in offering those capabilities, knowing how to offer them.

Q: It begs the next question, for those companies that haven’t gotten started with voice, how do they get started? What should their strategy be?

Jason Fields

It’s really not that far off from what a lot of existing analysts would already do. But because it’s a newer technology, I think brands fall into the novelty category of technology much more quickly. Novelty is not necessarily wrong place to start, but it typically doesn’t have legs. So we recommend to all of our prospects and customers if they aren’t already speaking to us about a very specific pain point in the customer journey, or in the business, where conversational AI might be applicable, that they figure that out. It is not a requirement that conversational AI be responsible for the entirety of a customer experience. It can be pinpointed specifically against a challenge that the customers are having with your brand, or the brand is having the other way around.

I like this analogy of comparing a voice assistant to a full-time hire. You would never hire one person to solve, many, many business problems. If you did, they’d be very special and command a great salary. Typically, they’re responsible for a pretty fenced in set of responsibilities. The same can be true of a voice assistant. And so, we jokingly tell a lot of our customers to write a job description for the voice assistant. It’s important not just to identify what it will do, but it manages expectations with the customers, it manages expectations internally, because you’re going to have a lot of senior stakeholders that want to boil the ocean and see it do everything. It also gives you a very specific runway of what initial responsibilities should be and what they should not be. And that’s really important with any technology that has the promise and allure of being responsible for so much, but really is more powerful when pointed at a specific moment or series of moments in a customer experience that can be positively impacted.

Dave Cowing

That’s fantastic advice, both focusing on a specific problem that will drive results, and to gain that momentum. I haven’t heard other people talk about technology this way, but writing a job description of what you expect voice to do for you is a very tactical, tangible way to approach it.

Jason, thank you so much. It’s been a fabulous discussion and we appreciate you sharing with our audience your insight on voice and conversational AI. So, thank you.

Jason Fields

It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me on.