Hemendra Singh
The first wave of informative technology saw the emergence of computers; the second wave brought about the advent of Smartphones and tablets. The next wave will comprise of Artificial Intelligence. And central to it would be digital assistants. Amazon Echo has taken the world of personal digital voice assistants by storm. It is, however, the advent of Google Assistant, a digital assistant app that is at the center of another revolution.
More than 500 million devices running Google Assistant, businesses simply cannot ignore it. Here are the seven ways of how your business can benefit from it.
Time Out is a city guide and has built an app specifically for Google Assistant. The reason is that the travelers want quick information on their fingertips. Here is where the personal assistant technology comes in handy. So to cater to this market Time, Out has developed a dedicated app for Google Assistant using Actions for Google -an open source development platform.
Another case in point is about Fandango, who has partnered with Google for people to book movie tickets on its platform. Their app for Google Assistant lets people book tickets with just a voice command and even apply discount coupons wherever applicable.
As we can see, the website was central to your digital strategy, developing apps and solutions for voice assistants will dominate the marketing strategy for companies in the next few decades. So one of your priorities would be to ask your mobile app development company to create an app specially for personal voice digital assistants.
As there are more than 500 million devices on which Google Assistant is installed, people are also increasingly placing an order through voice commands. Thus, if your business accepts online payment, you should also have a strategy of accepting payment using voice commands of customers.
All you have to do is have a Google Pay account, Google’s digital wallet. Once your customers place an order, they need to authenticate either through their fingerprint on their phone or by entering their Google account password.
Thus, your business can lose tons of potential customers if you do not have a system of collecting payment through digital assistants.
There are areas where even the world-wide-web cannot give you complete information. Only those who have a web presence can hope to generate leads and clients online. Here is where Google Assistant ups the game in favor of small businesses and independent contractors.
If your business is small in size and offers local services, then Google Assistant will list you in their database thanks to the years of research and a massive database of Google over the years. So plumbers, electricians, tutors, carpenters etc, stand to gain by using Google Assistant.
In this information age, the one who has the latest and accurate information surpasses the competition. For this reason, business should always opt for digital assistants who give accurate information when asked any question.
A research by Statista on the performance of the best personal digital assistants showed that Google Assistant is five times better than Amazon Echo when it comes to answering questions correctly. This in itself shows how beneficial it could be when used to gather by not just homeowners but business users also.
A business owner is always on the lookout for better ways to increase efficiency and productivity. A lot of time is spent on making calls, coordinating meetings and scheduling appoints for business development and administrative purposes. Google Assistant can be of great help in this sphere.
At the time of its launch, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Inc. in I/O 2018, an annual conference held in California showed the audience that how you can have your app on your phone call and schedule appoint for you. Also, the person on the other end would not even know that an artificial person is talking to them. This was in fact demonstrated in front of an audience for booking a haircut appointment. This is the power of a new technology called Duplex that Google uses.
This shows that everyday mundane tasks can be delegated to Google Assistant - like handling queries or ordering stationeries etc. -- that would free up time for business owners so they could focus on more important aspects of the business.
The other area in business where the Google Assistant comes in handy is when you want to jot down a few points as a reminder. All you have to do is say ‘take a note’ and then record your notes or reminders or a to-do list. At the end of the day, you’d get an email about the tasks and the reminders.
If your office uses spreadsheets more often, then you have to configure the settings once before you start using it. Just ask Google Assistant Support if you need any help. Once set-up, tell the assistant to ‘take a note,’ and it shall do the needful.
Thus, Google Assistant is your virtual personal secretary who’d attend to you when required.
The next phase of programming voice assistants will lie in businesses testing its ability to perform a plethora of tasks from answering specific phone calls to directing calls to respective departments and from handling customer objections to redressing grievances.
In this way, you can design your work in such a way, in your absence, your personal assistants can handle the operations; thus, reducing the cost of employing extra workforce.
Therefore, different businesses will have distinct needs based on the business dynamics. This is just the beginning and the world is starting to take note of new paradigm for doing businesses - through voice assistants.
My name is Hemendra Singh. I am Managing Director and co-founder of The NineHertz, a Mobile App and Web Development Company. My ideology is that a clear vision and hard...
