For most companies, 2021 was a transformational year. While customer service and support operations experienced a massive digital transformation, nothing quite replaced the need for one-to-one human conversations. Looking ahead to 2022, the customer experience (CX) world is poised for some exciting developments that balance humanity and artificial intelligence (AI), as innovation comes from some of the most unexpected places. Here are five of my CX predictions for 2022. Expect more consolidation around voice applications.

Where is the next great marketing innovation coming from? The advertising industry has changed drastically over the last decade, especially outdoor advertising. New technologies are pushing the industry forward with artificial intelligence, machine learning, voice search, and digital out of home (DOOH). Also, we need to consider the outdoor advertising advantages when used in collaboration with voice technology. More and more advertising space is now available online, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) solutions have expanded significantly.

Conversation is the key to the next wave of AI infrastructure investments. In 2014, Andrew Ng predicted that by 2020 more than half of all web searches would be non-text and instead they would instead be image and voice-based. While voice has yet to overtake the keyboard in terms of search traffic we are seeing a new inflection point in the voice market the rise of Conversational AI. Moving beyond simply voice commands and by combining the latest in voice recognition and language parsing technology with text-based smarts of interactive chatbots that has been developing rapidly over the last few years, Conversational AI promises to be a rich new vein of technology innovation. A range of new digital services are emerging as companies explore this new landscape of voice-first interactive applications that have the capacity to provide rich information as well as learning from interactions with users.

Check out the "Text, Language, and Speech" sessions at the O'Reilly Artificial Intelligence conference in London, 14-17 October 2019. As companies begin to explore AI technologies, three areas in particular are garnering a lot of attention: computer vision, natural language applications, and speech technologies. A recent report from the World Intellectual Patent Office (WIPO) found that together these three areas accounted for a majority of patents related to AI: computer vision (49% of all patents), natural language processing (NLP) (14%), and speech (13%). Companies are awash with unstructured and semi-structured text, and many organizations already have some experience with NLP and text analytics. While fewer companies have infrastructure for collecting and storing images or video, computer vision is an area that many companies are beginning to explore.

Check out the "Text, Language, and Speech" sessions at the O'Reilly Artificial Intelligence conference in London, 14-17 October 2019. Early price ends 6 September. As companies begin to explore AI technologies, three areas in particular are garnering a lot of attention: computer vision, natural language applications, and speech technologies. A recent report from the World Intellectual Patent Office (WIPO) found that together these three areas accounted for a majority of patents related to AI: computer vision (49% of all patents), natural language processing (NLP) (14%), and speech (13%). Companies are awash with unstructured and semi-structured text, and many organizations already have some experience with NLP and text analytics.

In 2018, an estimated 100 million voice-controlled devices were installed in homes worldwide, and the apps that control them, like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, are getting more powerful, with new skills being added every day. Great voice apps improve how users interact with the web, whether they're checking the weather, asking for sports scores, or playing a game.

Google has announced updates to its Cloud Speech to TextTrack this API and Text to SpeechTrack this API APIs that include additional languages, voices, and more affordable pricing models. The goal of these updates is to help developers build better intelligent voice applications and make the products more widely available. The Cloud Speech to Text API, available in both RESTful and gRPC flavors, is relied upon for creating voice applications where the accuracy of speech recognition is crucial, such as phone call and video transcription tools. The first update is that Google is now making premium AI models for video and enhanced phones that were previously in beta, generally available to all developers. According to the provider, the video model has been improved and now has 64 percent fewer transcription errors while the phone model has 62 percent fewer errors.

Is it just me or have we been playing a global game of Where's Wal- I mean, Alexa, recently? As we all nostalgically remember the game, the challenge was in finding Waldo. But thanks to Bezos's masterful game keeping, the challenge today is in not finding Alexa. Alexa ads are plastered everywhere I turn. Radio commercials sound plain wrong without an Alexa shout out.

Voice technology is gaining mainstream acceptance thanks to the new voice based devices from the leading companies like Amazon, Google. Simultaneously Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more efficient in identifying user intents. Many industries are experimenting with the devices and AI powered abstraction layers to identify areas that they exploit to deliver superior customer experience. According to Google, 20% of the searches are already by voice and they expect this to increase to 50% by 2020. Quantum leap in voice accuracy is another trend that is seen by the technology analysts over the last couple of years.

By Varun Mathur Mobile banking was one of the first apps for smartphones. Financial brands led the charge on the first mainstream wearable, the Apple Watch. Now, conversational interfaces including voice-first interfaces are the next frontiers to explore as consumers increasingly look for speed, convenience and security in their banking tasks. Why should banks invest in voice? Because, it is the most natural means of communication and can lead to more personalized interactions.