Voice assistants are already replacing human interactions across industries. In order to create a positive and friendly experience, it’s not enough to just have a voice-enabled product or service. Brands should prioritise creating a unique personality for their assistant that aligns with their brand mission and values.
Creating meaningful voice experiences include using intuitive and human dialogue, small talk, humour and empathy to your voice assistant. Keep in mind that with voice assistants, personality is the voice, the language it uses, and the ability to create a safe and supportive environment for your users.
How would you define who your voice assistant is if he/she was a person?
What kind of personality do you want to attach to the person?
What kind of personality are your users expecting it to have?
Here are a few best practices on how to deal with some of the challenges in defining the personality of your voice assistant:
Summon your Voice Assistant for an interview
Regardless of whether the Voice Assistant is replacing or extending a previous human-interaction, or meeting a whole new need, we can learn a lot about its personality by creating a job description for its role.
To write the requirements and qualifications of this Voice Assistant, you should first investigate the clients with whom your Voice Assistant will interact. In fact, defining your customers’ identities is the first step of building your Voice Assistant’s personality.
Answering simple questions like, “Are your clients professional or leisure users?” Defining their age range, gender, geographic spread, and language preference can help you build your Voice Assistant’s job description more accurately.
Building this job description also helps you to narrow down the Voice Assistant’s tasks and capabilities, which will, in turn, impact its personality. For example, if the Voice Assistant is supposed to provide you with account information, it should be formal and knowledgeable, but if it offers kids’ entertainment, it should be friendly and funny.
Once you have figured out who your Voice Assistant is based on its target audience and role, building its personality will be much easier. But first, we need to define its gender.
He, she, both, or nothing at all?
Gender transparency is a key component of your Voice Assistant’s personality. Whether you choose to give your Voice Assistant a gender or not, be sure that based on their expectations and interactions with it, your users can do that. Gender transparency can help you create trust among your users as well as increase usage and efficiency.
Based on our target audience and job description, we can start planning the gender of our Voice Assistant.
Some cases are easier to decide on: If I’m building a Voice Assistant to support young women during their first months of pregnancy, I’d probably choose female characteristics and voice for my Voice Assistant.
But what if my audience is mixed and I’m not sure about its preferences?
Like everything in life, we should put this to the test and see what people react best to. We can start by simulating an interaction and seeing what our users’ expectations are for our Voice Assistant, focusing on the gender perspective.
Find a way to give it a unique ‘Voice’
With the utilization of today’s popular voice-enabled devices comes the limitation of not being able to give your Voice Assistant a unique voice. While Alexa, Google, and Siri do offer a couple of voices to choose from, this situation is far from supporting your unique branding and personality. Many companies are trying to solve this problem.
Here is how Bollywood movie, ZERO solved it creatively.
Bollywood movie, ZERO has designed Alexa skill with the real voice of Shah Rukh Khan. Bauua Singh is the lead character, played by Shah Rukh Khan. Fans can listen to Bauua Singh’s voice all day long on their Amazon Echo smart speakers. Using the ZERO movie skill, users will be able to ask Alexa to talk to Bauua who will narrate shayaris, life fundas and jokes to liven up their day. Additionally, users can also enjoy the trailer of ZERO, dialogues and Zero’s trivia.
The “attitude” is another aspect of your Voice Assistant “voice.” It is the style, tone, little nuances, and the atmosphere it creates.
Should it have a formal style?
Should it sound relaxed and calming?
Should it energize your users and keep them awake?
When these questions are asked and answered, it is much easier to define your Voice Assistant’s voice.
Small talk leads to Big success
If there’s anything that will connect your users with your Voice Assistant, it is small talk. Either as side-interactions or as part of the main discourse, it’s the small talk that people will remember.
Small talk and chatter are good for creating trust and stickiness, but they are also valuable in keeping the user smiling when the system can’t deliver the desired information or action. The more chatter sentences and events you put into your bot, the better it is. While it is not a huge investment for you, it makes a huge difference for the user.
Your Voice Assistant is alive, continue to nurture it
Now that it has a personality, a voice, and a unique style, we understand that we have created not just a personality, but some type of person! Like us, our Voice Assistant grows every day, learns new things, and adapts to its surroundings. Make sure to track its behavioral success. Modify, add, introduce, and omit what’s needed in its personality to make your users feel that they are in the safe and supportive environment of your business.
