Over the past few months, organizations have focused on the adoption of collaboration and videoconferencing technology, but new practices need to be in place as they begin to welcome employees back into the office.
“There has definitely been an expectation of change,” said Anthony Mullen, senior analyst at Gartner. “And it’s not just from staff, it’s managers and HR teams, too. Certainly, a lot of the larger organizations were already taking a conservative look at what the future of work was going to be like – but now they’re really obsessing over that.”
Voice assistants that have been around for years, such as Alexa for Business or Google Home, could finally gain traction as companies keep their workers distanced in the office.
In fact, a recent report from 451 Research predicts that voice assistants and contactless interfaces will become the top investment choices for organizations.
For instance, Virgin Media Business product director Andrew Halliwell said he is aiding companies to help them become more agile and be able to navigate portions of the workforce returning to the office, as well as a potential second outbreak. This will likely lead to a larger adoption of highly developed AI assistants.
“I think at one point we thought: ‘Wow, voice is going to be the interface to absolutely everything and voice is amazing!’” said Mullen. “It’s one of the richest signals that we can possibly generate. But you don’t want offices full of people talking to computers.”
