New research has suggested that 85 per cent of businesses will use voice technology - such as Amazon’s Alexa or Microsoft’s Cortana voice-activated assistants - to communicate with customers within the next year.

The survey from Pindrop, a voice security and authentication firm, found that currently only 28 per cent of businesses use the technology. Based on the findings, the number of businesses planning to use voice to speak and listen to their customers will triple.

Just over two-thirds are planning to use voice-activated assistants for the majority of customer interactions, while nearly one in four businesses plan to use them for all interactions.

The research also found that 94 per cent of managers see voice technology as an important driver of customer satisfaction, with 88 per cent believing it will give a competitive advantage.

However, while respondents felt that voice technology will boost to sales, 80 per cent were concerned about the ability for businesses to keep the data acquired through voice-based technology safe.

Vijay Balasubramaniyan, chief executive and co-founder of Pindrop, said that retailers are common targets for fraudsters and we are moving towards a customer engagement model that has many of those with security responsibilities worried.

“The nascent conversational economy has not been around long enough to have the appropriate security layers put in place, despite the speed of uptake by consumers,” he explained. “If retailers are to be secure in the knowledge they can handle customer data securely and prevent fraud, they must put in place systems and technologies that can detect fraudulent activity with a high degree of certainty.”

The survey was carried out among 500 IT directors - 200 of which were based in the UK and 100 each in the US, France and Germany.

Share Story: