Five Levels of Consumer Awareness
All the way back in 1966, Eugene Schwartz laid out the 5 phases a consumer goes through before they buy a product:
- Completely Unaware: The consumer doesn’t even know that they have a problem, though they have their own ideas and preferences
- Problem-Aware: The consumer is aware that they have some kind of problem, but they’re not aware there are solutions
- Solution-Aware: The consumer is aware that there are solutions to their problem out there, but they don’t know about yours
- Product-Aware: The consumer knows that you sell a product that matches their problem, but they’re not convinced that it will completely solve it or be right for them
- Most Aware: The consumer knows they have a problem, they know solutions exist, and they know your product is a solution—now, they just need to be “closed.”
Where is Voice Adoption on the Awareness Scale?
The answer is: all over the place!
To some degrees, all of us are somewhat familiar with brand names such as Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant or even Cortana. Does it mean, as long as the shiny little speakers make their way into people's living room, we can all go home?
At the same time, millions of people are still risking their lives and others everyday - texting, typing and swiping on their phone behind a wheel when they should've relied on their voice as a much safer way to command their phone.
Why is User Engagement so Challenging for Voice Assistant?
Voice use cases are many but far in between. Alexa has 100+ skills, same as Google assistant as actions and Hound as domains, although all is not equal.
Adopting Eugene Schwartz's 5 levels of awareness:
- Completely Unaware: Over the holidays Google and Alexa have been educating users on holiday themed use cases such as Play New Year's Mad Libs. I played it and it was fun for the first time but not a use case that sees a typical users more often than once a year.
- Problem-Aware: During one of the in-house user studies, almost all the users acknowledge it is very dangerous to text and drive. 10-20% admitted they're guilty of charge. Are most users not aware that they can use their voice to check messages, reply and launch apps, or the products in market lack appeal one way or another?
- Solution-Aware: Many users know to use their voice on Google map and Waze to get to destinations. These voice add-on features aren't making or breaking the deals though.
- Product-Aware: Philips hue light bulbs are known for being one of the most popular personal wireless lighting solutions, working alongside google homes. The name brand comes to people's mind when you talk about voice controlled lights.
- Most Aware: Streaming music and control home appliances such as lighting on smart speakers. The most commonly known and adopted voice use cases include setting up alarm and inquire weather forecast. They exist in all the voice assistant products, therefore have become a hygiene factor instead of a differentiator.
Summary
In spite of the fact that Amazon & Google manage to convince a dozen million consumers on the initial investment for the hardware, all voice assistant providers still struggle on getting the usage up in volume as well as frequency.
Voice will eventually take over the current UI of type, tap & swipe, but so far, voice assistant providers continue to see screen-involvement & cross-devices to be the engagement key for voice service - counter intuitive I know. This shows us that it will take another few years to see higher adoption and deeper engagement in voice interface as the technology catches up for better UX and more reliable result or action taken upon command.
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