Voice AI Company Voysis Launches Independent Commerce Platform for Retailers and Brands

Over 50 Percent of Retailers Have Mobile Voice Search on Their Roadmaps for 2018 Says New Report Released to Coincide with Voysis Commerce Launch.

At an event in New York, Voysis has announced its new product, Voysis Commerce, and released the findings of a research report that shows voice commerce and search is at a major inflection point for retailers and brands.

The launch of Voysis Commerce comes shortly after the company revealed their breakthrough on WaveNet technology that improves on public demonstrations by Google’s DeepMind team. Voysis Commerce allows any eCommerce company to stand up their own brand-specific, native Voice experience, which can be easily incorporated into their mobile websites, apps and devices. With a Voysis-powered voice AI, shoppers can search for and buy products using their voices. And because it can be easily incorporated into existing mobile experiences, retailers and brands can offer a multi-modal voice and visual shopping experience with minimal time investment.

Dr. Peter Cahill, voice-expert and Founder and CEO of Voysis says Voysis Commerce fills an important void in the market for brands and retailers, “With recent advancements in voice technology, we’re now at a place to deliver these experiences at scale. We’re already working with some of the best known retailers to launch voice commerce imminently, helping them take back their customer relationships from companies like Amazon. While Alexa may have paved the way, the reality is few retailers want to allow Amazon to own their customer data and relationships. It’s the equivalent of letting the wolf into the pen. We not only have a better, more accurate, contextualised solution, but one that appeals to brands.”

The announcement comes at an interesting time for Voice AI in search and eCommerce. Earlier this year the Meeker Report said voice was set to overtake typing for search. Research commissioned by Voysis (See attached) and unveiled at the launch event in New York found the following:

• 50% of retailers have mobile voice search on their roadmaps for 2018, a massive increase from sub 1% in early 2017.
• The majority (60%) of online traffic now comes from mobile devices, but this traffic accounts for only 16% of conversions.
• Retailers surveyed see voiceas a way of increasing conversion rates from mobile with currently 80% of items from carts abandoned.
• A large majority of consumers (83%) believe using voice technology makes it easier to find and discover products. Even more, 89%, said voice makes searches faster.
• Mobile voice search, which takes advantage of the natural synergy between smartphones and voice, is currently on the tech roadmap for 35% of respondents, but that will increase to 60% by the end of 2018.

The Voysis Commerce announcement comes at the end of a busy 2017, for the rapidly growing company. At the start of the year they announced an $8 million financing round led by US venture capital firm Polaris Partners. Shortly thereafter, Ian Hodson, the former head of Google’s text to speech program who led their efforts on Google Maps, Google Assistant and Android, joined the company.

They also recently announced their new Edinburgh, Scotland office to add to their office in Boston and headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.