58% of consumers say they would be more likely to try a brand that incorporates voice technology in their customer service

A new survey from TELUS Digital Experience, the company dedicated to crafting enduring customer experiences through data, technology, and a human-centric approach, shows that the use of voice technology has gained mass adoption with consumers, both at home and in the workplace. From voice assistants on smartphones and smart speakers in homes that answer questions and tell you the weather, 81% of Americans now use voice tech daily or weekly, with 68% increasing their usage over the past year.

“Over the next year, every consumer app and website will have to be rebuilt with an AI-powered voice and multimodal interface to take full advantage of the advancements in voice tech, such as Apple Intelligence and Google AI”

Driven by AI, voice tech has reached a tipping point. While 36% of consumers started using voice tech two to five years ago, interest is accelerating —25% of Americans surveyed said they tried it for the first time just the last month. These findings highlight the growing importance of voice technology in the entire customer journey, from the first engagement with a brand to driving long-term retention and satisfaction (CSAT).

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Advancements in Generative AI (GenAI) have moved voice technology forward, improving interactions with virtual agents and driving next-gen experiences that provide brands with a competitive edge. Notably, 58% of respondents would be incentivized to try a brand if they incorporated voice tech into their customer engagement channels. This is reinforced by the fact that nearly 69% of consumers had a positive first experience with voice tech and continue to use it, while just 6% had a negative first experience and haven’t used it since.

“Over the next year, every consumer app and website will have to be rebuilt with an AI-powered voice and multimodal interface to take full advantage of the advancements in voice tech, such as Apple Intelligence and Google AI,” said Tobias Dengel, President of TELUS Digital Solutions and author of The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology. “We see multimodal experiences that combine voice, visual, and touch inputs as the future of how people will interact with technology, and our survey findings show that consumers increasingly want more natural and intuitive ways to engage with digital platforms.”

The top reasons consumers said they used voice tech included:

• Speed and efficiency: 35% said speaking is faster than typing
• Convenience: 31% feel that voice commands are simpler than navigating menus
• Multitasking: 30% like that voice tech allows them to perform other tasks simultaneously

As for how respondents use voice tech:

• Personal use only: 56% use voice tech exclusively for personal tasks
• Both work and personal use: 33% use voice tech in both settings
• Work use only: 11% said they use voice tech exclusively at work

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Voice tech’s top applications include:

• In personal life: Daily tasks (66%), communications (66%), and information retrieval (55%)
• In work life: Voice-to-text for emails, messages, and content creation (44%), information retrieval (37%), and administrative tasks (32%)

Consumer Frustrations with Voice Tech

Americans are embracing voice tech, mainly for its speed and efficiency, so it’s not surprising that the survey also reveals that their patience wears thin when things go wrong. Many consumers have encountered errors: 65% say their voice assistant has misunderstood their commands, one-third (33%) have had it execute a command incorrectly, and over a quarter (27%) have received incorrect information. That’s when frustration gets the best of many— 41% admit to yelling at their voice assistant when errors happen, and 30% have even used profanity or curse words.

When consumers are rude to voice tech, they say it comes from an urgency for resolution. Nearly one-third (30%) of surveyed consumers have resorted to raising their voices or used profanity with self-service tools, such as chatbots, in an attempt to escalate their issues more quickly. On the flip side, the majority of Americans (62%) do try to be polite, regularly saying “please”, “thank you” and “you’re welcome” during voice tech interactions, and 29% have even apologized for being rude.

Voice Tech Improvements

Consumers pointed out several key areas for improvement that could increase their use of tools and devices that incorporate voice tech, including:

• 53% said they’d like to see improved accuracy in responses
• 46% say voice tech should have a better understanding / interpretation of accents and dialects
• 41% want faster response times
• 41% would like to see improved security features / enhanced privacy controls

Addressing these key areas for improvement requires close collaboration with a leading technology partner with specific voice tech expertise. By working with the right partner, businesses can focus on implementing the advancements consumers value most, ensuring their voice solutions are responsive, personalized and also secure. This partnership-driven approach is essential for creating customized voice tech apps, websites and services that drive customer engagement and provide brands with a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market.

Ready to elevate your brand’s voice experience? TELUS Digital’s multidisciplinary approach to voice technology combines talent and deep expertise from our award-winning AI, design, strategy, and engineering teams. Our end-to-end services include voice case identification, conversational UI design, voice tech tool selection, and voice integration such as speech recognition, natural language processing (NLP) and various APIs. Through our proprietary Ground Truth Studio AI data platform, we also provide fully-managed, multi-language audio dataset creation at scale through data collection and annotation, detailed transcription, and fine-tuning capabilities to enhance the performance of audio models in specialized areas. Get in touch at telusdigital.com/contact

Survey Methodology: The survey findings are based on a Pollfish survey that was conducted in August 2024 and included responses from 1,000 men and women aged 18+ who live in the United States and indicated a familiarity with voice technology.