Voice-controlled technology is evolving, and our behaviours are increasingly shifting with it…

By Ella Palmer

This week, SEC Newgate has been proud to support Vixen Labs, Europe’s leading full-service voice agency, with the official launch of their Voice Consumer Index 2022, an international study on voice-controlled technology.

The Index, released on Tuesday, revealed how consumers’ attitudes to voice – think Alexa, Siri and Google devices - are shifting, how this is impacting daily behaviours and what this means for brands and marketers.

Yesterday, the report was unveiled at a special online event where Vixen’s CEO, James Poulter, was joined by a panel of industry experts to unpack this year’s findings, including Associate Director of Brand and Digital at SEC Newgate, Jed Backhouse, who shared his own insights on the findings and what they meant for brands moving forward.

The study demonstrated how the use of voice has shifted in the wake of the pandemic. It seems as the world has unlocked, we are turning more than ever to conversational technology to navigate our hybrid lives and businesses.

We are becoming increasingly familiar and even reliant on our smart speakers, phones and headphones to complete daily errands - more than ever before.

What was once a ‘Hey Google, play some music on Spotify’, has turned into (for some) a ‘Hey Google, can you book me a train ticket to Brighton on July the 5th’.

We are also beginning to use our voice on a wider range of devices, which is expected to increase steadily in the coming years.

Something that was most surprising from the results is a clear decline in the concern about privacy and trust when we are using our voices. As we become more reliant on our conversational assistants and more aware of how we can control how our data is used, privacy concerns seem to subside.

Looking forward, a third of users are expected to increase their frequency of use of voice. As we begin to see further developments from Meta, Apple, Google and Microsoft, the more obvious it becomes that devices have the ability to converse.

If Voice technology wasn’t enough, the report looked at another big part of our future (whether we like it or fully understand it or not), the Metaverse. More than likely we will not be typing our way there, but using our voices to interact and be present within it. 

Voice AI barely existed five years ago, so trying to understand where it will be in another five is an almost impossible task. But what we know right now is we are currently looking for fast, accurate and efficient access to information that will make our lives better, more streamlined, and less expensive.

Our consumer habits will soon migrate to those companies who are able to speak with their customers, meaning brands must stay educated on these growing technologies in order to stay relevant and to leverage the benefits.

Click here to read the report in full.