After almost a century-and-a-half the
keyboard is finally dead. That’s right. Gone. But you used it to find this
article, I hear you think (through the AI on your phone, right)? Perhaps. Now,
ask yourself the last time you looked forward to entering your flight details…
“for the third time…”, and you’ll start to see why such a strong statement is
justifiably more than hyperbole from a tech company looking to construct a
reality and peddle its products.
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Admittedly, the timing of
this rekindling of the voice search conversation coincides nicely with the
launch of ‘Speak Now’ by easyJet. However, while this new feature will cut the
time it takes to input booking criteria from around 12 taps to just a few quick
vocal steps, it also marks another milestone in a far more significant and
far-reaching move from third-party voice and messaging platforms, towards
first-party or owned voice search capabilities.
Go where the customer already is
Anyone who’s been
following progress in voice will have seen how early trailblazers such as KLM,
Triplt, United and others have spread themselves across almost all third-party
voice and messaging platforms so they can “be where the customer is”. This
scattergun approach is often the only way to understand what consumers want
from a new piece of tech, not to mention the cost-to-market and whether there’s
a long-term business case for investing.
With the launch of Speak
Now, and other innovations in voice, that chapter appears to be coming to an
end – at least in terms of the current status quo. That’s because, unlike some
of the voice experiments of the last few years on Messenger, Alexa and others,
we are now seeing voice search evolve from fancy FAQs and automated responses
to systems which can recognise natural sounding language and the ability to
process more complex requests.
Most importantly of all,
we’re starting to see all this take place INSIDE a brand’s own app. Perhaps
even more surprising is the fact that it’s travel verticals such as hotels,
airports and online travel agencies, not historically known for being the
leading light in innovation, which have led the way. Accor Hotel’s ‘Phil’ and
Miami International Airport’s ‘talk to Mia’ are great examples of progress.
And, in India, where voice search has grown 270% year-on-year, you can ask
Yatra’s app to show SpiceJet flights to Mumbai next Thursday.
It’s not just first-party
apps that are receptive to the idea of going where the customer is. Operating
systems are also bypassing apps altogether. Assistant is built into every
Android Go phone, reaching millions of low-end devices in emerging voice-first
markets like LATAM and Africa. KaiOS, the world’s third biggest OS, now
supports ‘voice typing’ allowing users to dictate text messages, perform web
searches and anything else you could do in a text box.
Reshuffle the pack through voice
Saying the keyboard is dead might feel a
bit heavy-handed, but the search of ‘now’ is ready for a shuffle – and as ever,
those who embrace voice, will find themselves ahead of the pack.
KLM has said publicly that providing the
option to search for flights using voice commands in multiple languages is
their ‘next strategic step’. Expedia has said voice is ‘its future’. And Google
has acknowledged that in fast-growing countries such as India, Indonesia,
Brazil and Mexico, voice is already the primary means of communication among
new tech users.
The notion that voice search may finally
banish the keyboard to its 18th-century origins is also supported by
our research. Last year, Travelport’s independently-commissioned Global
Digital Traveler Research revealed how almost half of travellers use voice to
manage travel, with the greatest usage among Gen Y travellers (61%), according
to the survey of more than 23,000 people globally.
The additional functionality provided by
features like Speak Now are likely to continue this march towards a
voice-activated world – that easyJet became the first airline in the world to
launch conversational voice search is another milestone on the way.
As Google has said, the next billion
users of the internet are going to look very different to the last. With voice
search becoming the next great frontier in the digital revolution, is the
travel industry ready for the change that this pioneering technology will
inevitably bring?