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How Voice & AI will disrupt Retail & E-Commerce

Source: Lsa-conso.fr – Guillaume Bacuvier, VP Advertising Solutions, EMEA at Google

In 2015, e-Commerce One To One Monaco revealed the vision of Guillaume Bacuvier, VP of Advertising Solutions, EMEA at Google. During the keynote organized by Ingrid Fillon, he explained the technical disruption that will impact Google Search, Retail, and eCommerce players in the coming years, due to numerous innovation such as voice and AI.

Google’s Home Assistant is the web browser of the future as seen in the picture above. Indeed this new technology is able to act like a human personal assistant upon voice requests. The worldwide Search Engine is challenged to think about innovative ways to become more personalized. It also has to be accurate in facilitating life like an assistant would do. Everything gets easier and faster. No more need to be on a computer, mobile, etc. as it is now possible to use Google seamlessly. Businessmen or Millennials embrace this new personal robot assistant.

2017 NextUser YouTube video – Voice Commerce, two uses cases for Nespresso & L’Oréal

The rise of AI personal assistants in e-commerce and retail

As mentioned by Vincent Ducrey (Hub Institute), in a webinar about the same topichere are the last technologies bonding Humanity with Machines overtime:

  1. 1960: Keyboard => the Machine transposes thoughts of humans to deliver a formal message.
  2. 1968: Mouse => the Machine receives a signal from humans from mouse gestures and gets the right message.
  3. 2007: Fingerprints => The Machine is able to recognize the identity of humans from distinctive senses.
  4. 2015: Gesture => the Machine is able to detect the moves of humans and correlate with identity.
Gradually each technology brought precision in terms of personalized assistance. Firstly, the purpose was to deliver the right message but the Machine was limited to transposing Human’s thoughts. Henceforth the Machine is able to interact with humans to create a smart way to be still closer. Fingerprints and the recognition of gestures were capable of proving this theory. Nowadays, one of the most performing technology is the combination of voice and AI. Apple was the pioneer within this interface by implementing “Siri’’ in 2010. It was only running on iPhones and Tablets but it was just the premise of something much bigger. This intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator disrupted humans’ behavior. In fact, the purpose of this program is to assist people in their daily life. It helps them by giving individual features such as weather, time, stock, day, etc. in real-time.

2017 NextUser YouTube video – NextUser with Natural Language Classifier (NLC)

The impact of voice and AI on the future of e-commerce and retail

Besides, this application can send a message or make a call from a given order of people. This whole process is possible by voice capture. However, other Giants from the tech industry created their own intelligent personal assistant. For example, Microsoft with Cortana, Amazon with Alexa, or IBM with IBM Watson, and its partners like NextUser.

Nowadays many devices have been manufactured within home control assistants, video games (Kinect), or car assistance. But what about e-Commerce? 66% of people are interested in a vocal assistant without using it or starting using it regularly. This means people are most ready to go the way of voice and AI. According to Gartner, the sales made through vocal assistants would exceed €2.1 billion of revenue.

Predictive analysis and AI: the future of personalization

NextUser via IBM Watson created its own AI used to implement a 1:1 marketing tool in order to personalize consumer experience. Able to interact with multiple industries, this tool is perfectly linked to Google’s approach. In fact, NextUser’s solution aims at making consumer’s life easier and cater to their needs as accurately as possible.

In this way this young pioneer start-up in predictive analysis brings real value to eCommerce retailers, since the request of the consumer will only focus on one action which is straight to the point, according to Google. It is no longer about reaching a request step by step but about what people are looking for in real-time. Within a more connected world, people cannot wait anymore. Sometimes, they give priority to the availability of a product or service rather than quality or price. But also, consumers look for new experiences to live or share. The experiential marketing used to matter in the luxury industry but nowadays consumers need to feel pampered. A specific mood, unique experience and feeling affiliated with the brand’s universe make the attachment stronger.

2017 NextUser YouTube video – SkinCeuticals: Shopping Assistant Prototype v1

NextUser is capable of offering all of these features via Artificial Intelligence and predictive analysis. First, the front-end piece consists in making a request to a vocal interface. It creates a relationship between the consumer and the machine and bring the consumer up to the order. However, there is also a back-end piece. Indeed thanks to a lot of collected and analyzed web data it can recreate the user’s path. Also, it sets up a frame based on what they like, their habits, their hates, and so on. For example with Nespresso, NextUser has been imagining which type of pods the consumer would order based on their personality and behavior. For L’Oréal, Artificial Intelligence recreates the consumer’s typology in order to isolate all of their specific features. Then, it also makes recommendations of products, pertinent articles, etc. 

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