Voice technology has made great leaps in the past few years. Speech recognition error rates are approaching human levels, and machine learning continues to improve the ability to understand the nuances of natural language such as meaning or intent. Last year, 20% of Google’s mobile search queries were voice queries. While Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon dominate with widely used assistant, Facebook and Samsung as well as a handful of other brands are exploring how to incorporate voice into their customer experience.

Voice represents a logical next step in the evolution of how we interact with information. It’s more natural than using a touchpad or keyboard, takes less brain power, and creates even more opportunity for tech to move further into the background where it doesn’t require precious attention. And it’s quickly getting to a place where it will deliver what consumers want most from it: A fully integrated experience that connects their platforms and devices with a layer of context and a smarter assistant that incorporates preferences and behaviors to get predictive.

The broadest application for voice tech with consumers will continue to be realized through digital assistants, primarily through smartphones and home devices. The more a voice assistant can connect with the user’s personal data, the better it will be at layering personal context and making recommendations. According to a report compiled by JWT 60% of smartphone users agree that “if voice assistants could understand me properly and speak back to me as well as a human can, I’d use them all the time.”

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