Per PwC, 65% of 25-49 year-olds use a voice assistant daily, and not just for the weather. 58% of users perform local business inquiries, and 28% of these voice searches result in the user placing a phone call based on the results.  Unfortunately, live voice integration with business systems can be a challenge.  RPA is here to help! 

While voice assistants are becoming ubiquitous (55% of households own a smart speaker in 2022), integrating real-time business data with voice assistants has historically been difficult. Fortunately, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can be used to easily expose business data to voice assistants for customer and employee consumption.

To illustrate, here are 2 example use cases that outline the process.  Both of these deployments utilize the Amazon Alexa/Echo platform (which has 70% of the U.S. market for smart speakers).

Voice-enabled Customer/Client access to Business Data
     

Employment Staffing Firm Providing Live Job Opening Information

• A scheduled bot retrieves current job opening information every 15 minutes and updates a jobs database for the voice assistant to use. This bot can extract this information from an internal Staffing/HRIS system or retrieve it from a website’s “jobs” section.         
       
• A custom Alexa skill is created (utilizing a “no-code” development platform to expedite development) that handles the user’s inquiry using the live database the bot is updating.         
       
• This custom Alexa skill would work as follows:
  > USER: “Alexa, open ABC Staffing jobs update.”
  > ALEXA: “Welcome to ABS Staffing job search. What is your Zip Code?”
  > USER: “28202″
  > ALEXA: “Thank you. Here is a list of the jobs currently available. Job1, Job2, Job3, Job 4….  Please text us at 704-555-1212 if interested or to apply.”
     

Voice-enabled (restricted) Employee access to Business Data 
     

Salesforce Opportunity Pipeline Update for Sales Leadership

• Each hour a scheduled bot signs in to Salesforce, runs a pipeline report, exports the data to excel, and updates a pipeline status database for the voice assistant to use.        
       
• A custom Alexa skill is created (utilizing a “no-code” development platform to expedite development) that handles the employee inquiry using the live pipeline database the bot is updating.        
       
• This custom Alexa skill would work as follows:
  > USER: {Sales Manager that is using Alexa Auto in car}: “Alexa, open ACME pipeline update.”
  > ALEXA: “What is your access code?”
  > USER: “AT1641”
  After confirming access, the Alexa skill executes a bot (via a secure webhook) to email the daily sales information to the requestor and/or respond via voice as follows:
  > ALEXA: “Thank you. Here is today’s pipeline activity. 3 Opportunities worth $34,000 were added.  2 Opportunities worth $72,000 were won, and 1 Opportunity worth $15,250 was lost.”
     

As you can see, by utilizing RPA and “no-code” voice-assistant development tools, any sized business can leverage the power of voice to serve the rapidly growing number of customers and employees that rely on digital assistants every day.

Contact us today to learn more about voice-enabling your back-office data silo and upgrading the digital experience of your customers and employees.