Conversational assistants are future of customer experience, new study

Consumers increasingly prefer to interact with bots rather than humans, especially when it comes to researching products, learning about new services or following up on post-purchase queries.

According to research by the Capgemini Research Institute, involving over 12,000 consumers and 1,000 business executives, nearly 70% of the former will progressively replace visits to a store or bank with their voice assistant within three years’ time.

A comparison from 2017 to 2019 shows an increase in consumers’ use of voice assistants for various purposes, including buying products like groceries or home care (an increase from 35% to 53%), customer service interactions post purchase (37% to 52%), and making payments for products or services (28% to 48%).

Other findings include: 40% of those now using voice assistants have started doing so in the last year; In 2017, 61% of people expressed their satisfaction in using a voice-based personal assistant like Google Assistant or Siri on their smartphones; this number rose to 72% in 2019

Privacy and security concerns remain, however. “This research establishes that conversational assistants are the future of customer experience, valued by consumers for their convenience and by companies for the operational efficiencies they create. Compared to our study released in early 2018, a much higher proportion of consumers now expect voice assistants to be their first choice within the next three years. In the meantime, the needs of customers are evolving as they progressively use the technology,” says Mark Taylor, Head of Customer Engagement at Capgemini Invent.

“Privacy and security also remain paramount. Since our last research, it seems there has been little change in consumer concerns about how voice assistants affect privacy and data security. Companies must do more to address these concerns as conversational commerce increasingly moves into the mainstream.”