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Bringing vCommerce to the web with Mike Page Sep 02, 2019

Show notes

Mike Page, CEO and Co-founder Phebi, joins us to discuss voicifying the web and collapsing the path to purchase.

Presented by Botmock

If you're using things like Lucid Charts and Microsoft Visio to design your conversational experiences in, you should check out BotMock. Those tools are business process mapping tools, are limited and will disrupt your rapid prototyping capability. BotMock is a purpose-built conversational design tool that'll have you rapidly prototyping and testing in no time.

Check it out for free

In this episode

It would be easy to read the headlines and think that voice is all about smart speakers. It'd be easy to think that it's all about 'big tech', and the big two in particular: Amazon and Google.

However, voice is an interface and, as we've spoken about many times on the podcast, we'll see voice increasingly appear on every surface.

Helping to bring voice into other mediums is Mike Page and his company, Phebi. It allows eCommerce websites to add vCommerce capabilities and is pushing forward the charge to bring voice interfaces to the web.

In this episode, we discuss how you can add voice capability to your website, user adoption, client and business awareness, the voicified web and much, much more.

Links

Visit getphebi.com

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn

Follow Phebi on LinkedIn

Email Mike

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Voice and the TV with TiVo's Charles Dawes and Patrick Byrden Jul 10, 2019

Show notes

Dustin and Kane speak with Charles Dawes and Patrick Byrden of TiVo about how they're helping users discover content through the power of voice, and the future of TV.

Presented by

If you're using things like Lucid Charts and Microsoft Visio to design your conversational experiences in, you should check out BotMock. Those tools are business process mapping tools, are limited and will disrupt your rapid prototyping capability. BotMockis a purpose-built conversational design tool that'll have you rapidly prototyping and testing in no time.

Check it out for free

In this episode

When sitting down to watch TV, 60-80% of the time, people know what they want to watch. The problem is finding that thing. Knowing where to look, what channel to check, which on demand platform to search.

Finding content on TV is hard.

And what about the 20-40% of people who have no clue what to watch? How do they find something relevant? We've all been down that rabbit hole of skipping through film after film, trailer after trailer on Sky or Netflix, only to get tired and give up in the end.

These are the problems TiVo are seeking to solve with its voice technology solution.

For those of you in the US, TiVo will be a household name. A verb. And, for those in Europe and beyond, chances are, you've heard of TiVo. What you might not know, is that TiVo power the voice capability for Samsung TVs, Sky Q, Virgin and more. So even if you haven't interacted with the customer facing set top boxes, you may well have used its voice solution.

In this episode, we speak to Charles Dawes, Sr Director, International Marketing, and Patrick Bryden, Sr Director, Customer Solutions about how TiVo are fixing the broken content discovery model through the use of voice.

We discuss the TV landscape and the problems they seek to solve, usage of the solution and how they measure success, the technology used and architecture, personalisation and recommendations, maintenance and constant improvements, and whether the remote control is a thing of the past.

Links

Follow TiVo for Business on Twitter

Visit the TiVo for Business website

Connect with Charles on LinkedIn

Connect with Patrick on LinkedIn

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Multi-channel conversational strategies with Nico Acosta Jun 18, 2019

Show notes

This week, Dustin and Kane chat with Nico Acosta, Director of Product and Engineering at Twilio, about how companies are approaching multi-channel conversational strategies.

Presented by

Check it out for free

In this episode

We chat to Nico Acosta about how he's observing companies approach their conversational strategy using Twilio's Autopilot platform. This builds on the episode with Elaine Lee where we spoke about Autopilot from a design perspective. This time, we're zooming out and looking at how Autopilot can fuel your whole conversational strategy across all channels.

Nico has a fresh perspective on technology architecture, building on conversations we've had with Matt Hartman and Charlie Cadbury and providing detail on how to actually build once and deploy across all conversational channels, including voice assistants, chat bots and phone lines.

We discuss some of the parallels and similarities between IVR design and development compared to voice assistant creation, and how the IVR, voice assistant and chatbot industries are converging.

Nico also shares some insights into the kind of use cases that are working well, including a chat bot that automatically generates a website for a small business based on a short conversation. Nico also shares his dream application of Twilio Autopilot, which is all about obliterating being put 'on hold' when calling a company.

Links

Follow Nico on Twitter

Check out Autopilot

Become an expert conversation designer

The Conversational Academy is a fantastic online course that'll teach you the ins and outs of conversation design. Prepare yourself for the UX role of the future and enrol on the course today. VUX World listeners will save $100 when you enrol at conversationalacademy.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rundown 006: WWDC, Siri, reMARS, Alexa and the future of voice shopping Jun 15, 2019

Show notes

In this episode, we discuss the Siri announcements from WWDC19, the Alexa announcements from reMARS and the Future of Voice Commerce report.

WWDC Announcements

Alexa Conversations

Alexa Cross-Skill Scenarios

The Future of Voice Commerce report

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How voice will change the way we shop Jun 13, 2019

Show notes

After being published in the Harvard Business Review with the article, How voice could change the way we shop, Kane gives a high level overview of the piece in a presentation to those who attended the General Assembly event, Voice Commerce: the future of shopping?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rundown 005: Google Assistant ups its game Jun 04, 2019

Show notes

What we discuss in this episode

Become an expert conversation designer

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Voice strategy advice with Amazon Alexa Chief Evangelist, Dave Isbitski May 30, 2019

Show notes

We're honoured to be joined by Amazon Alexa Chief Evangelist, Dave Isbitski, to discuss the conversations that he's having at C-Suite level about how brands should be approaching voice and where it's all heading.

Become an expert conversation designer

In this episode

Dave Isbitski is the Chief Evangelist at Amazon Alexa and spends his days touring the world speaking and educating brands on why they should be adopting a voice strategy and how they can do it.

We chat to Dave about what he's observing at Chief Exec level within brands across different industries and how he's advising brands to approach voice. We also look at the bigger picture, where voice is heading and what brands can do today to put themselves in prime position tomorrow.

This is a key episode for digital and innovation leaders and C-Suite execs as you'll hear first hand from Amazon on how you should be thinking about and approaching voice in your company. From visioning and scene setting to resourcing, planning and scaling. You'll also hear about the opportunities that are waiting for you once you start down this path.

It's also an important episode for anyone working at agency level, as you'll see some of the techniques Dave uses to sell voice to big companies and understand where the technology and user behaviour is heading.

We dive into details on:

Voice in the enterprise
Short and long term roadmap planning
The similarities between voice now and mobile then
How to get users to discover your skills
Conversation design
Relationship building
The future of voice and how to plan for it

Lots of you sent your questions in for us to ask Dave, which we do at the end and Dave shares plenty of tips for designers, developers, agencies and creators in this space.

Thanks to everyone who sent their questions in, it was a great way to end the show.

Become an expert conversation designer

In this episode

Voice first devices such as smart speakers are often touted as accessible. That's one of the main reasons voice assistants are forecast to grow in adoption and usage over the next 5 years. Voice is the new interface.

Whether you're a child, an elderly person or if you have a disability of some kind, voice is here to enable to you interact with technology and connect with those around you.

However, as you'll find out in this episode, there are some fundamental accessibility problems with smart speakers. Having to download the app in order to onboard, for example. Even the design of smart speakers themselves can be intimidating for some.

As part of the BBC 2 Big Life Fix in the UK, Ruby Steel and Will Merrill of Smart Design Worldwide looked to address these problems for Susan.

Susan has MS and requires round the clock care. Even things like changing the TV channel are a challenge for Susan and Smart Design Worldwide looked to change that.

Through creating a custom build, 3D printed casing in the shape of an owl, this 'accessibility jacket' made Alexa less intimidating. Inside, were two Echos. One for Susan to address, and that one talked to the other. Why? You'll find out in today's episode.

There are also plenty of insights into how to make your voice experiences more accessible. Some of which, like the use of small nested menus, go against the grain of current VUI design thinking.

Prepare to be inspired and challenged.

Links

https://smartdesignworldwide.com

Smart Design Worldwide on Twitter

Smart Design Worldwide on Medium

Ruby Steel in Big Life Fix

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Voice first sneaker drop with Nike and bridging the voice and social gap with Unilever with Nick Rovisa and Matt Lang May 17, 2019

Show notes

Become an expert conversation designer

In this episode

In part 2 of RAIN week, we're joined by Nick Rovisa, Director, Business Development, and Matt Lang, Strategy Director. The guys share their learnings on the voice industry, including how different clients perceive price i.e. how much should a voice project cost, as well as whether to think about voice from a content or app perspective.

We dive deep into the work the team did with Nike in using Google Assistant to launch a new pair of sneakers at the half time interval during a televised Celtics v Lakers basketball game. We look at how the project came about, the lead times, the technical necessities of handling substantial transient traffic and the results of the project on sales.

We discuss how through working with Unilever and a selection of influencers, RAIN were able to achieve a 10% conversion rate of newsletter sign ups via the Alexa skill they built. The Unilever project was a 7 week pilot with a selection of influencers in an attempt to bridge the social and voice landscape. We discuss how this new medium caused confusion with influencer licensing and how to get around that, as well as the results of the pilot and what it takes to sustain a content heavy voice experience.

We discuss how to measure success and how, for some, starting to gather data to develop understanding is a better option than setting KPIs. We cover how to sell, without selling or being too overly salesy (that's a word).

Finally, we chat about what's missing in voice: virality (that's another word). This includes developing our thinking on how to make experiences spread and whether to plumb voice into the mobile and social ecosystem in order to help discoverability.

Welcome to RAIN week

This week is RAIN week. We've got two huge episodes featuring the industry-leading and ground-breaking RAIN Agency.

RAIN are a dedicated voice agency and have worked with 23 of the Fortune 100 companies on voice projects. From Nike to Unilever, Campbells to Tide creating experiences from utility to leisure to kids and even product launches.

In this episode

In this first episode with RAIN, we're joined by VP Emerging Experiences, Greg Hedges, to discuss how RAIN approach voice with the Fortune 100 and we get into detail on how they built the Kung Fu Panda Alexa skill for DreamWorks and Amazon.

We share some detail on what's changed in voice since RAIN pivoted in 2015 to focus exclusively on voice. We discuss how brands have moved from more tactical thinking to more strategic and how voice is something that is beginning to impact businesses, rather than be a nice marketing tick box. We also discuss how voice has changed ownership within brands, moving away from the research and innovation teams and moving into the hands of marketing.

Greg shares how RAIN has changed and adapted over the years, how the tools they use have improved, how they built using the VOXA framework and he shares some of the secret sauce RAIN use to track and analyse their voice experiences using Google Analytics.

We also dive deep into the Kung Fu Panda Alexa skill and discuss some of the technical detail in how it came to be, how RAIN approached the project and what Greg learned from a technical, design and strategic perspective.

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