Online, you’ve been able to get away with doing the bare minimum. For years hotels just had a website with pictures, you had to call to book a room.
Same for restaurants. Websites used to just show you the place and the menu. To book a table, you needed to call.
In some restaurants, that’s still the case.
The mobile revolution forced some companies to open up their systems. You needed to go a step beyond the shop window and let people actually do stuff. You had to let people transact. That meant creating APIs.
But not everyone did that. Not everyone opened up their APIs. Those that haven’t got APIs or that have old, legacy line-of-business systems provided by incumbent suppliers will have a hard time realising the true value of voice.
Voice has the potential to create huge efficiencies and streamline countless processes, but you need to make it core to what you do and integrate it with the rest of your line of business systems. Will Hall discusses this ‘systems thinking’ approach in detail on the podcast.
Just as a webform causes hassle if it doesn’t have validation or if it doesn’t shoot the request straight into your line-of-business system to kick-off a process, voice will cause just as much hassle for you if it’s an add-on.
You’ll never have enough time to focus on it. You’ll complain that it isn’t working and you’ll either abandon the idea or you’ll keep it ticking over, never truly gaining any benefit from it.
Voice will force you to organise your data like never before. Those who haven’t even thought about what data they have and what state it’s in will have a lot to do.
