In our present, and even more so in the immediate future, the natural expectation, on the part of those who buy a product or service, is that those who sell make the most of technology to associate the purchase with the greatest possible satisfaction. Companies that fail to maximize the benefit of this progress will lose ground to the most innovative brands. In retail, digital innovation has as its strategic objective to radically change the buying and service cycle through convenience of use, precision and speed.  Iconic Customers Module is one of the most advanced means to achieve this.

In one minute, a person can say an average of five times more words than they can type. After all, voice is the most natural and efficient form of communication. It should come as no surprise, then, that the use of a voice assistant, which is already marking retail in other fields of application, asserts itself as a powerful means of facilitating the commercial relationship, and one of the essential prerequisites for a  personalized and rewarding customer experience.  Gartner estimates that by the end of this year, around 15% of business interactions between retailers and customers worldwide will be handled by voice assistants.

If we look at more advanced markets, for example in the United States, online food is an acquired consumption style: nearly two-thirds of Americans already have a habit of buying it through an app  or interacting with a site. Today, just under two-thirds of mobile users have used voice search at least once, which is already common practice for 60% of younger consumers. Voice assistants will be an indispensable means of customer engagement, for dissemination, next, in more than half of families.

In the future, the voice assistant will also have a typical prerogative in banking and financial transactions; the voice-based payment option will be the future of FinTech. Molto easier, faster and more convenient than endlessly typing account numbers, IBAN, passwords and sequential checks of operations. The same applies to balance checks, withdrawal alerts, and alerts of various kinds. Effortlessly with banks and insurance companies, using a voice assistant on your smartphone, will be normal. About 80% of consumers already report being satisfied with the voice shopping experience; the new voice payment methods will give eCommerce a further boost.

With the consolidation of this evolution of demand, the use of voice in a restaurant, for ordering and checkout or in the delivery of food at home, should not be taken as a bet, but as a simple matter of time. It will be a way to simplify the work of the room staff and improve communication between this and the kitchen, with the consequent streamlining of operations and increasing their speed. And, of course, the autonomy of the customer will be emphasized at every stage of his stay in the premises or in his online relationship, from booking to menu choice and payment; in the management, and related delivery, of the order from outside; in the customization of the service and, for the restaurateur, in the loyalty of the customer.
The voice assistant, therefore, will be a new step forward in the development of the customer experience for catering, for the hospitality and tourism sector and for many other production sectors. We work on the development of Iconic Customers Module through original and reliable voice assistance applications.