Voice search stands to live at the heart of how retail marketers guide the customer experience into the future.
Behind every voice query lies data riper with real-time intent and context than perhaps any other source of shopper information. A spoken query is a direct window into what consumers want at that moment, how they think about a topic — or product — and their emotional state of mind.
As a result, voice queries are leading to new pools of intent-driven, contextual, real-time data that marketers can use to develop more customer-centric engagement strategies.
To be sure, voice technology has come a long way, and it still has a way to go. But its upward trajectory is poised to deliver better content and interactions in the near term that will increase adoption of spoken search, and in turn, enable marketers to evolve their approach to the customer experience.
Voice as a pathway to understanding user intent and context
User intent is a fundamental aspect of search, just as it’s a fundamental aspect of engaging with consumers at the right time with the right content. Google has made major strides to improve its algorithms’ semantic understanding, perhaps most notably with its Hummingbird and RankBrain rollouts. Marketers and search giants like Google are aligned on a mission to understand user intent.
