The World of Virtual Assistants

How many ways can we order a Domino’s Pizza today -

·         Traditional way by visiting in person or order by phone.

·         Common way through Web or app on mobile or Digital TV.

·         Latest way by ordering through chat bot.

·         Futuristic way by voice assistant.

Two decades ago digital revolution started with internet when businesses started to host Web sites. With the proliferation of smart phones in last decade, mobile applications became increasingly common. In last two years, chatbots have started to pick up. Its biggest advantage is that there is no need for users to open the web site or download the app on smart phone to reach out to businesses. Facebook provides bots on its Messenger platform which can take over sales and customer service functions like a virtual assistant. Order through chatbot just like you text to your friend. 

  

 We are now one step ahead with virtual voice assistants - Amazon echo and Google Home, with no need to even pick up the phone. For instance, ask Amazon echo – ‘Alexa, tell Dominos to get me a Pizza’ and Alexa will open up the dialogue with Dominos. These virtual helpers use artificial intelligence to parse what users say and return useful information. Users could ask Google Home to throw a TV show from Netflix over Chromecast or ask Spotify to stream music. Amazon and Google seem to be winning the race to rule the growing market of voice assistants but it is still very young market so we can't predict who will be a top performer among big five –Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. Apple has Siri and Microsoft has Cortana as the voice recognition feature but they don't have home assistant yet and must be working on some form after the success of Amazon and Google offerings. 

It was anticipated that voice assistants would undermine Google’s core business as people will go less frequently to website that specialize in online search and advertisements. A deep dive into the framework behind ‘Alexa’ and ‘Home’ reveals that Amazon and Google have much bigger reach as they go from a novelty to a whole ecosystem. You can delight your customers with a completely new way to interact with your business as they don't need to pick up phone or laptop; all they have to do is ask the voice assistant. Here is an overview of amazon voice echo system:

To provide voice enabled service on Alexa, you need to build a skill interface and publish it on Amazon cloud, just like you develop a mobile app and publish it on play store. Amazon Skill is a third party functionality which can be integrated into voice assistant that is accessible to users who have Amazon Echo. There are now more than 12,000 skills from companies like Starbucks, Uber, Spotify, Dominos and from other early birds in this space. End users can enable these skills on Alexa application and Alexa will then allow it to connect with that business service. Similarly, Google Home allows you to define an ‘action’ on its cloud. An ‘action’ is to Google Home assistant what a ‘skill’ is to Amazon Alexa. Market for virtual assistants is expected to grow faster. Voice controlled solutions are also being developed for IOT in AV residential and corporate market. Natural user interfaces, such as those based on gesture and speech, will represent the next major disruption in the digital world.

But every beautiful innovation has a flip side, so does the convenience of virtual voice assistant. Your queries are recorded on cloud for interpretation and continuous improvement of artificial intelligence engine. Though all the queries are encrypted before storing on cloud but it raises the concern of security and privacy. What if all your confidential conversation is recorded even if you didn’t intend to lend your voice to the ears of Alexa or Home. We need a better way than to just tap the “Mute” button on the device to not let it listen to our conversation. These are the concerns that should be addressed soon as the concept becomes mature with connected technologies in our surroundings. While security is hardened, it is time to embrace the power of voice assistants.

Beyond Brand when it becomes a Verb

Remember the time when Colgate was synonymous to tooth-paste. My parents and teachers used to say that ‘colgate’ your teeth atleast twice a day. I recall few decades ago in India, every detergent was referred to as “Nirma”. Apple launched i-pad and it became a big instant hit that customers started referring tablet from other companies, say tab from Samsung as i-pad only. I think nothing can be a better complement for a company than using its brand as a verb by its customers, which sets a benchmark and make the brand self-advertising engine. We ‘Google’ but we don’t Bing. We Xerox but we don’t Polaroid. Can we convert a brand into ‘verb’ by advertisement and force potential customers to use it.  What happened to yahoo when several years ago it started a campaign asking people "Do you Yahoo?". It didn’t work and Yahoo had to contend with remaining noun only. However, a small start-up ‘whatsapp’ became synonymous to ‘text’ and went viral with a word of mouth. Today more than 800 million people don’t do ‘text’ but ‘whatsapp’ to their friends. Facebook valued its social capital not the physical assets at $19 billion because it had the potential of the verbification.

This happens when a new innovation disrupts the traditional market and becomes a sensation. Other examples in the Silicon Valley are the two-sided platform such as Uber. I no longer hire ‘cab’, I ‘uber’ to go to my work. Airbnb became a sensational online short term property rental service in less than a decade. We no longer ‘rent’ but ‘airbnb’ our homes. I don’t pay but ‘Venmo’ my dues to my friends. People ‘tweet’ the opinions and ‘fb’ the posts. Waoh! these products are beyond brands.

I see a shift from products to platforms qualifying for ‘verb’ with these recent offerings. Such platforms provide two sided markets with supplier on one side, consumer on another and a service provider in the centre. Focus is shifting from product centric approach to customer centric approach by providing a service central to user needs. Objective is not to increase sales but is about growing user base. When focus shifts to building social capital through the platform, users are encouraged to use such brand more often as ‘verbs’.

However, there is a flip side to it. companies are wary of becoming their brand name too generic to be (mis)used as verb. People could forget the brand itself impacting the trademark. Companies also fear brand to be strongly casted for a specific use. My thinking was validated when I saw these rules on https://www.google.com/permissions/trademark/rules.html

•     Use the trademark only as an adjective, never as a noun or verb, and never in the plural or possessive form.
•      Use the generic term for the product following the trademark, for example: GOOGLE search engine, Google search, GOOGLE web search.

Fear of companies as big as Google may be justifiable but it is an honour for a brand to be included in vocabulary and move beyond just a noun to action packed verb. If that's not the case, why did Microsoft hoped that people would "bing" a new restaurant or "bing" a new job?

Change in user preference from owning to sharing

What is common among Netflix, Spotify, Uber, Amazon and Airbnb platforms. If you are a tech savvy and market analyst, you would say that all these applications provide an ease to connect two-sided market with consumers on one side and suppliers on another. You are right but think about the change in user preference from owning to sharing, a driving force these companies are leveraging.

In the industrial era, Baby boomers and Gex-X were obsessed of owning cars, houses and goods. Efficient manufacturing fuelled the unprecedented growth of goods. Ownership was synonymous to reputation. Now millennials, also known as Gen Y, do not want to stick to materialistic goods as technology makes things more affordable and accessible as services. Let us take a closer look at the entertainment industry. Earlier the albums were released in the form of magnetic tapes and CDs, which later became downloadable from iTunes. Now people prefer to stream it from services such as Spotify and Apple music. Monthly subscription is more popular as few prefers to buy and own media. Buying a DVD has become thing of a past when latest movies can be streamed online. Netflix has repositioned itself from DVD rental company to streaming company. Subscription model is becoming popular instead of owning disks.

Before Uber disrupted the cab industry, few people viewed taxi hailing service as comfortable as click of a button. Uber completely changed the way riders acquired private transportation. After the success of Uber, car industry is foreseeing a future of having the convenience of your own car as a service rather than owning it. With the revolutionary idea of driver less cars, we don’t need to even know the driving and a day is not far when car will become an on-demand service. You pay a monthly fee, like Spotify, tell the app where you are going and get instant access to car on-demand. This shall be more efficient and less risky as compared to driving own car. New York, California, Nevada, and Arizona have already allowed autonomous vehicles testing.

IT expenses are also shifting from capital expenditure to operating expenses. Earlier starting a new company with limited funds and infrastructure was a distant dream. Companies were overwhelmed by the investments in hardware infrastructure. However, digital era of twenty first century is not the same. Having a great idea is good enough to begin a start-up without investing much energy and funds on infrastructure spending. Success of Airbnb, Spotify and Uber is a proxy to the shift in company setup.

Software as the service and cloud as the platform have fuelled the growth of IT industry and proved to be a big boon for startups. Companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox and Netflix are operating their IT Infrastructure through cloud. A decade ago, cloud framework began as a simple idea when Amazon started out sourcing its excess server capacity. Today that idea has become an AWS with more than 40% market share as mentioned by synergy research group. We don’t need to make large upfront investments in hardware and spend a lot of time in managing resources. Instead, you can provision the right type and size of computing resources as per your need, and only pay for what you use. As an experiment, I tried to host a website on Linux server instance over cloud and it took me ten minutes. We can pay for usage instead of buying permanent licenses for software programs. Scalability is another merit you get from cloud without having to worry about fluctuating needs. Salesforce CRM software provided an alternative to on premise CRM systems. IBM, Microsoft and Google are investing heavily on cloud infrastructure as they see a potential for continuous revenue stream from companies who are increasingly planning to move its IT infrastructure on cloud.

Trend is to embrace the idea of sharing instead of owning which is driving the developments in twenty first century.  It can prevent inefficient usage of limited resources. People are less interested in owning, which is fuelling the disruptive trend that is going to define our future.