What People Aren’t Telling You About Voice Technology
Here’s my honest take on why you may be struggling with your voice technology.
I’ve worked on voice projects – and only voice projects – every day for nearly 20 years. I’ve kept this laser focus because I believe, like many others, that voice command technology is one of the most important automation technologies of our time. It’s how we keep people, and therefore business, moving.
Voice communication is natural communication. It’s the fastest way to get information across to someone else or to receive information from someone. It’s why some people just prefer to pick up the phone and talk rather than send a text, IM, or email. It’s why super-busy professionals – doctors, researchers, even executives – have used voice dictation for decades. They don’t have to worry about proofreading what they’ve written or making the mistakes that are so common with manual data entry. They can just say what needs to be done, and it can automatically be captured on paper or, more recently, in a digital record.
This is also the reason why voice technology first captured the attention of business leaders in fast-paced supply chain environments two decades ago. If we can audibly tell a store associate, warehouse worker, factory worker, nurse, or restaurant server where to go and what to do next, they’re going to get there much faster because they don’t have to stop to find and read information on a screen.
Perhaps that’s because so much effort was put into automating data capture via barcode scans first that very few people really considered how many manual interactions it still took to use those data collection devices. Handheld mobile devices, wearables, tablets, and even barcode scanners are all fantastic “automated data capture” technologies. However, if you’re only automating barcode scans and RFID tag reads, then how much are your workflows really being automated? Probably not as much as you think if workers are still having to manually key in data or push buttons to share and validate that data.
Even if you’re layering what I’m going to call you “legacy” voice technologies on top, you still have way too many people pushing way too many buttons and swiping screens far too often every day. A voice may be telling them what to do, but you’re not giving them a way to use their voice to tell the data collection device what to do.
That’s why you need to mentally and physically part ways with the old-school voice technologies that you’re probably relying on today. Understand what “voice technology” should mean, what it can do, and how it works today.
I was asked to sit down with Zebra’s Transportation and Logistics Industry Lead, Andre Luecht, to talk about this more on a recent episode of the Your Edge podcast. Many Zebra sellers, solution engineers, and industry principals have been fielding questions from customers about voice. What’s the right approach? What’s the right hardware? What software is best? Why have we had so much trouble with voice in the past? Have you heard of “voice-command automation” and how is that any different than “voice-directed technology?”
They came to me for my input as well, so I was happy to share my perspectives in a more open forum. I hope you’ll check out my conversation with Andre as I think we answer many of the questions you may have as well.
There's also an MP3 available for download below.
