Situation: companies are not in a hurry to develop services for voice assistants - what are the risks
Smart speakers are considered one of the promising channels for interacting with users. However, companies are not in a hurry to use it in practice. Let's discuss the situation.
/ Unsplash / Pascal van de Vendel
By 2023, 90% of all smartphones will have a voice assistant. At the same time, over the past year, the number of users of smart speakers in the United States grew by 40% and reached 133 million. As for Europe, more than three million devices were sold there in the first quarter of 2019 alone .
')
Following the trends, some companies want to use the power of smart speakers in business. For example, for IT process management (ITSM). So in ServiceNow they work on solutions that will allow monitoring requests for technical support and creating tickets using voice assistants.
Voice assistants are used in retail. At Butterball, a turkey producer and other poultry products, developed the skill for Alexa. With it, customers can access the company FAQ. Last Thanksgiving, the service was used by 20 thousand people. Clothing and footwear maker Levi's offers a similar service - customers can ask a smart column to help with product selection, talk about gift certificates and return policies.
But such cases are more likely exceptions, since most companies are not in a hurry to develop their services for smart speakers and voice assistants. Next, let's look at a few reasons.
Difficulties of recognition. Smart speakers make a mistake when recognizing user commands. This creates difficulties while working with the device. Therefore, they are mainly used to respond to relatively simple and specific requests.
Although in the near future the situation may change. Last year, Google introduced the Duplex system, which is able to make phone calls and carry out some orders. During the presentation, the voice assistant called the real restaurant to reserve a table, and a beauty salon to sign up for a haircut. The administrators of institutions did not even suspect that they were not talking to a person.
Difficulties with authentication. If you use voice assistants as the first line of technical support, you need to resolve the issue of authorization in the service. It can be difficult to do this using a voice interface, plus it may not be safe to communicate personal data when communicating with a voice assistant (more on this later).
In fairness it should be noted that Alexa has the skills from American Express and Capital One Financial. They give the user the opportunity to log into your personal account. However, the functionality of these services is limited - basically they allow you to know the balance of the account.
A virtual assistant is also at Bank of America. It is implemented as a chat bot. Although you can communicate with him using voice, according to company statistics , users prefer to type commands with text.
Concerns about privacy. According to a Microsoft survey among 7,000 users of voice assistants around the world, more than half of respondents do not want to transmit any personal data via a smart column ( p.24 ). In the UK, police and rescue services began developing skills for Alexa and Google Assistant to call the security services. More than half of the country's residents have negatively responded to this initiative - they fear for data security.
And these fears are not groundless - last year, Amazon accidentally sent recordings of other people's conversations with Alexa to a stranger. One of the Amazon customers in Germany asked for information about him stored on the company's servers. However, together with them I received about 1.7 thousand audio files and a PDF-document with the interpretation of conversations of another user.
/ Flickr / Frerk Meyer / CC BY-SA
The information security specialists are also concerned that in the near future, voice assistants will not only be able to listen, but also determine what the user is doing.
Engineers from Wuhan University in China presented the technology of echolocation, which with fairly high accuracy determines the behavior of a person in the room - he is sitting, standing, walking or lying. Experts have concerns that smart speakers can be used as a source of sound waves. This opens up a new attack vector for intruders.
Voice assistants have potential in many areas: retail, e-commerce, technical support organization and others. For example, in the future, they will be able not only to report any information from the company's FAQ (as implemented in the case of Butterball), but to provide full assistance in solving user problems.
But for this it is necessary to increase the level of data security and create convenient voice interfaces. Work in this direction is already underway - engineers are working on systems for reliable identification of the owner by voice. There is a possibility that we will be able to see the first results in the near future.
Materials from our corporate blog:
/ Unsplash / Pascal van de Vendel
Market situation
By 2023, 90% of all smartphones will have a voice assistant. At the same time, over the past year, the number of users of smart speakers in the United States grew by 40% and reached 133 million. As for Europe, more than three million devices were sold there in the first quarter of 2019 alone .
')
Following the trends, some companies want to use the power of smart speakers in business. For example, for IT process management (ITSM). So in ServiceNow they work on solutions that will allow monitoring requests for technical support and creating tickets using voice assistants.
Voice assistants are used in retail. At Butterball, a turkey producer and other poultry products, developed the skill for Alexa. With it, customers can access the company FAQ. Last Thanksgiving, the service was used by 20 thousand people. Clothing and footwear maker Levi's offers a similar service - customers can ask a smart column to help with product selection, talk about gift certificates and return policies.
But such cases are more likely exceptions, since most companies are not in a hurry to develop their services for smart speakers and voice assistants. Next, let's look at a few reasons.
Voice service issues
Difficulties of recognition. Smart speakers make a mistake when recognizing user commands. This creates difficulties while working with the device. Therefore, they are mainly used to respond to relatively simple and specific requests.
Although in the near future the situation may change. Last year, Google introduced the Duplex system, which is able to make phone calls and carry out some orders. During the presentation, the voice assistant called the real restaurant to reserve a table, and a beauty salon to sign up for a haircut. The administrators of institutions did not even suspect that they were not talking to a person.
Difficulties with authentication. If you use voice assistants as the first line of technical support, you need to resolve the issue of authorization in the service. It can be difficult to do this using a voice interface, plus it may not be safe to communicate personal data when communicating with a voice assistant (more on this later).
In fairness it should be noted that Alexa has the skills from American Express and Capital One Financial. They give the user the opportunity to log into your personal account. However, the functionality of these services is limited - basically they allow you to know the balance of the account.
A virtual assistant is also at Bank of America. It is implemented as a chat bot. Although you can communicate with him using voice, according to company statistics , users prefer to type commands with text.
Concerns about privacy. According to a Microsoft survey among 7,000 users of voice assistants around the world, more than half of respondents do not want to transmit any personal data via a smart column ( p.24 ). In the UK, police and rescue services began developing skills for Alexa and Google Assistant to call the security services. More than half of the country's residents have negatively responded to this initiative - they fear for data security.
And these fears are not groundless - last year, Amazon accidentally sent recordings of other people's conversations with Alexa to a stranger. One of the Amazon customers in Germany asked for information about him stored on the company's servers. However, together with them I received about 1.7 thousand audio files and a PDF-document with the interpretation of conversations of another user.
/ Flickr / Frerk Meyer / CC BY-SA
The information security specialists are also concerned that in the near future, voice assistants will not only be able to listen, but also determine what the user is doing.
Engineers from Wuhan University in China presented the technology of echolocation, which with fairly high accuracy determines the behavior of a person in the room - he is sitting, standing, walking or lying. Experts have concerns that smart speakers can be used as a source of sound waves. This opens up a new attack vector for intruders.
What's next
Voice assistants have potential in many areas: retail, e-commerce, technical support organization and others. For example, in the future, they will be able not only to report any information from the company's FAQ (as implemented in the case of Butterball), but to provide full assistance in solving user problems.
But for this it is necessary to increase the level of data security and create convenient voice interfaces. Work in this direction is already underway - engineers are working on systems for reliable identification of the owner by voice. There is a possibility that we will be able to see the first results in the near future.
Materials from our corporate blog:
- From Excel to Blockchain - own billing in ServiceNow ( Part 1 , Part 2 )
- Customer Service Management: how to manage customer service
- ServiceNow secrets that simplify and speed up your work
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/459910/
All Articles