What voice does my voice assistant and my brand have?

More and more brands have a chatbot or voice assistant. But how is this bot supposed to talk? And what voice does he have? The MetaDesign agency has carried out a very interesting and relevant study on this subject, which I have included in this article. podcast would like to introduce.

For all those who don’t feel like reading, there is now the chance to find out more details about the study in the 4th podcast episode of Chatbots Talk.

And here is a written summary of the study:

Invisible interfaces – bots and voices – are becoming increasingly important touchpoints with the brand, but are currently focused primarily on functional benefits. Language, voice and speaking style can also be branded to turn interactions into differentiating brand experiences. This study provides starting points for the “how”.

An interdisciplinary team of end customers, research experts, digital branding specialists and sound and language specialists has translated four strong established brands (car2go, Red Bull, Zalando and Commerzbank) into interactive conversation profiles as a basis for a differentiating personality design of bots and voice assistants.

New challenges through invisible interfaces (voice assistants)

Artificial intelligence and invisible interfaces pose huge new challenges for companies. According to comScore, 50% of global search queries are likely to be carried out by voice as early as 2020 and one in five mobile Google searches is already carried out by voice command. Alexa already has over 50,000 skills and can control over 20,000 devices. In Facebook Messenger alone, the number of chatbots has doubled to 200,000 within a year (source: Statista). And since the last Google press conference at the latest, it has been clear that bots and assistants will increasingly determine our everyday lives and become less and less distinguishable from human dialog partners.

Currently, most companies are focusing their efforts on being able to offer voice control and chatbots, creating interfaces and offering relevant skills for Alexa and the like. But at least as important as the question of “what” is the question of “how”. How should a brand sound, what should it say or write? How does she react and what attitude does she embody? Because if invisible interfaces become the most important brand touchpoint in the future, they will have a significant impact on brand perception:
Brand is the missing link to turn invisible interfaces such as chatbots, messenger bots, service bots, voice assistants, etc. into real brand experiences.

How do conversations become brand experiences?

The “humanization” of the brand raises new questions for branding. Some values, tonalities and dialog and interaction skills alone are not enough to define a human-like character and let him have interesting conversations – maybe even build a relationship. This is where this study comes in and attempts to think bots and voices out of the brand:

• What factors are relevant for branding bots and voice assistants?
• What can a development process look like?
• Which personality dimensions need to be defined in order to develop relatable brand personalities?
• What is the relationship between functionality and brand personality?

The results of the study are four exemplary brand personalities who introduce themselves in a prototypical messenger bot. This allows you to decide for yourself what you want to learn about the brand personalities.

All further information on the MetaDesign study and the MetaProfiler can be found here.

And here you can even “chat” directly with the individual brands from the study.

And if you have any further questions, you can of course contact me at any time.
Click here to go to my contact page.

Do you already know the template “Let your Chatbot Talk”? Take a look here…