WHAT IS A UTILITY VOICE ASSISTANT?

There are two components:






WHY IS VOICE ENGAGEMENT SO IMPORTANT? 



Top three reasons to have a voice solution:

1. The rapid growth of this medium is changing the way consumers seek and consume information.
 
2. It’s imperative for utilities to reinforce their brand as a modern service provider.
 
3. It’s a powerful way to engage consumers, encourage energy behaviors, and offer new products and services. 

WHERE ARE UTILITIES TODAY?


9% of utilities surveyed already have a voice solution. An additional 73% of utilities are evaluating or planning a voice solution.

WHERE ARE TODAY?


Only 19% of utilities surveyed felt they were equipped (in terms of resources and staff) to develop a voice assistant.




WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS FOR CREATING A UTILITY VOICE ASSISTANT?


As with any new digital development, utilities need to make a build vs. buy decision.

Recommendation:

Energy Voice Assistants have largely common functionality and user requirements across utilities. It therefore makes sense to buy an off-the-shelf solution developed by a third party to take advantage of the learnings from multiple utility deployments.

HOW ARE VOICE ASSISTANTS DELIVERED?

  

  

Authentication

After the Voice Assistant is enabled from available skills/actions in the Smart Speaker account, each user must go through an authentication process. To ensure privacy, each user must link the Smart Speaker account by entering their utility account ID and a unique identifier into the welcome screen, as illustrated below. This is a one time process.
 


 














  



PODCAST: VOICE FOR UTILITIES

Hear from Jason Brenier, Vice President of Strategy at Georgian Partners. Jason is a recognized expert in speech technology, with deep experience developing natural language solutions. He’s an alumnus of Stanford University’s Natural Language Processing Group and has a PhD in Linguistics.