How Not To Build Your Voice UX

Have we forgotten what it means to talk?

Over the last couple of months, I’ve held dozens of discussions with colleagues, clients, and friends on what it means to build a Voice User Experience (VUX), also known as Conversational UI.

I found out that although we are struggling to solve technical issues building voice and chatbots, the real challenge for most organizations today is the actual setup of a successful voice user-experience. Businesses not only struggle to understand how a conversational flow should be built but often, they can’t figure out the relevant use-cases.

Is it really so difficult? I don’t think so.

I think the problem is we’ve been doing it all wrong.

Rather than leveraging voice and conversational capabilities by replicating real-world interactions, we are trying to imitate the behavior of an array of digital channels (e.g. websites/mobile apps), which have been built over the last decade with the purpose of imitating real-world interaction…

So instead of building a voice user experience that reflects the conversations we generally have with our banker or our travel agent, we force our conversational user interfaces to imitate bank mobile apps or leading travel websites.

Why?

Voice User Experience falls into the “digital innovation” category and as such, is being considered the next evolution of digital interaction.

However, Voice User Experience is different from the classic graphic UI (GUI) we’re all used to. It’s not really evolution, but REVOLUTION. A new paradigm has been introduced and it’s superior to everything we’ve ever known. Why? Because Voice UX provides us with the pleasure of using our best natural communication tool –VOICE — in a human-free environment. Who could ask for more?

So the next time you build your Alexa skill or Google Home Action, or even just a voice bot, picture a real-world conversation with the best human expert in the field, and not the best mobile app…