Does voice first suck? And is it stuck? With Bret Kinsella, John Kelvie and Ahmed Bouzid

Picture of Kane Simms
Kane Simms

More ways to listen and watch

About this episode

Join three of the voice AI industry’s leading minds to debate whether voice is living up to its promise and what should happen next.

[vc_column][movedo_empty_space][/vc_column]

Does voice first suck and is it stuck?

When I was on the Voicebot podcast, Bret asked me whether we’re going through a voice first winter. I said that I didn’t think so, nor did I really care. There are opportunities to do good work and enhance people’s lives regardless. However, there has been an undercurrent in pockets of the industry where some folks are becoming frustrated that voice hasn’t reached its potential (however you define that).

Over the past few weeks, founder of WitLingo, Ahmed Bouzid was involved in a conversation at the popular VoiceLunch meet where a participant stated that:

‘Beyond the weather, time, and the occasional timer and alarm,’ they mused out loud, ‘am I myself really using my Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant that much in my life? I mean, really and honestly, am I? No, actually, not really…. So, if I am not using them that much and yet I am such a believer in Voice First, what hope is there for the rest of the world?’

He wrote a piece summarising his thoughts. This coincided with a post from Bespoken.io founder, John Kelvie’s post claiming voice is stuck.

The primary questions raised in both of these two pieces are:

  • Is voice living up to its promise?
  • Where is the true value in voice first?
  • Has there been enough improvement in the technology and ecosystem to support its own ecosystem like the App Store?

To debate this, we brought along Voicebot.ai founder Bret Kinsella, together with Ahmed and John to figure out where we actually stand and where we need to go next.

We also continued this discussion on Clubhouse afterwards. Follow @kanesimms on Clubhouse for more open ended after show discussions.

Links

Read voicebot.ai

Check out WitLingo and Bespoken

Read Voice is stuck

Read The #VoiceFirst User Interface Has a Use Case Fit Problem

Read Voice first sucks

Follow Ahmed, John and Bret on Twitter

Connect with Ahmed, John and Bret on LinkedIn

Share

Weekly newsletter

The latest in AI-powered customer experience. Make better strategic decisions with the help of our weekly newsletter.

Host

Kane Simms

A strategic AI advisor who, for the past decade, has helped business leaders and product owners transform customer experience using conversational and generative AI.

Share

✓   Link copied

Weekly newsletter

The latest in AI-powered customer experience. Make better strategic decisions with the help of our weekly newsletter.

Top articles and podcasts

Related content

The best AI use cases are right in front of your eyes

Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player… CCW published a report recently that asked contact centre leaders how much impact AI has had on

How to build reliable AI agents: Test Driven Development is back!

Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player… One of the top questions on the lips of teams building AI agents is ‘when is it

The two things contact centres have been missing until now
Cresta CEO Ping Wu unpacks the two things contact centres have always lacked, and how AI changes that.
Our deep analysis of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI Platforms 2026
Discover where all 14 vendors landed, why voice is only an optional criterion and the question the report doesn't ask.

Meet VUX at CCW Europe, Amsterdam, October 5-7

Register now: Why your contact centre playbook is obsolete