New Globant Report Uncovers the Gap Between Voice Technology Investments and Preparedness in Organizations

Globant, a digitally native technology services company, released its "2018 Voice-Activated Technology Report"--a playbook for organizations to develop strategies. The report found that while organizations are excited about the potential business benefits of voice technology, many are still looking to prepare themselves to be ready to take advantage of it as part of their larger digital strategy.

To better understand the state of voice technology adoption across today's organizations, Globant surveyed more than 600 senior-level decision makers on their preferences, investments and priorities for integrating voice capabilities into their organizations.

Globant found that the increasing adoption and normality of voice technology in the consumer market is struggling to successfully translate in the workplace environment. In fact, 44% of senior employees use voice-activated technology daily in their personal lives, and 72% use it weekly. These numbers drop to 31% and 53%, respectively, when it comes to using voice in their work lives. Meanwhile, another third (33%) never use voice technology at work.

Additional key findings in the report include:

• Organizations see the business value of investing in voice technologies. The top benefits today's organizations hope to gain by investing in voice this year include:  Faster customer service responsiveness (34%), connecting with consumers in a more conversational manner (23%) and improved search (22%).
• However, investment plans don't align with preparedness. Of those investing in voice technologies, more than a quarter (28%) plan to allocate between 11-25% of their budgets toward voice in 2018. Yet, only half of organizations (55%) feel prepared to use it, and just 18% have done specific research around voice to guide their strategies.
• Companies see voice as the key to being competitive. One-third of companies (32%) believe voice will prove their biggest differentiator from competitors. In fact, 75% of decision makers typically think of companies that offer voice interactions as more sophisticated than those that cannot.