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Beyond just showing customers how to use a voice agent, a multi-agent product will have to help customers find the agents that are available to them, choose among them, and explore what they are capable of. What is the most effective way to show customers how to get the most out of the voice agents on your product?
Baseline Guidance
- Customers should easily be able to discover information about the primary uses, benefits, and capabilities of available agents.
- Customers should be made aware of any multi-agent functionality supported by the device:
- Customers should be informed of simultaneously available wake words.
- Customers should be informed of Universal Device Command support.
Because voice is a largely invisible modality that relies heavily on customer recall, it is important to be clear about how to engage with multiple voice agents, and to get customers excited about the possibilities.
The registration and education flow, available to customers either during the product’s out-of-box experience (OOBE) or afterward, might be a good place to introduce your customers to available agents. Including additional discovery mechanisms is another great way to encourage customer engagement.
- Encourage customers to explore available agents, for example by listing the value or strengths, and including example utterances.
- Be aware of the steps needed for a customer to choose and register agents, and make the process as easy as possible, especially if it occurs during the OOBE process.
- Provide an easily accessible list of registered agents.
- Describe the strengths of each agent. Assigning roles to each agent may help customers understand how best to use multiple agents, and make it easier for them to remember how to interact with them.
- For the example utterances you present, choose utterances with a high value for that particular agent, showcasing unique or valuable use cases or experiences.
Much of the customer education and initial settings choices are handled in a product’s out-of-box experience (OOBE). The OOBE setup flow can cause cognitive overload for customers due to the many decisions they must consider. For customers who choose not to complete the voice setup during OOBE, or who want to change their settings, offer them an easy way to access those settings at any time, for example in a companion app.
We recommend that a companion app should allow customers to:
- Set up and manage voice agents at any time
- Learn how to use their voice agents
- Access simple controls and preferences for voice agents at any time
Locate voice and agent settings in a single, easy-to-find area of the companion app. All products should provide the following settings and controls from within their device’s companion app:
- The ability for the customer to register voice agents
- The ability for the customer to configure key settings for each voice agent (e.g. language selection).
The device maker should supply the customer a place to manage their voice agent- specific settings.
- Customers should be able to register voice agents at any time
- Customers should be able to change agent settings, preferences, and manage voice history (if provided), or should be provided a link to a place to do that
- Agent-specific settings should be located together in an easy-to-find area.
Agent makers should allow customers to change settings and preferences specific to their voice agent.
- Provide to device makers the information necessary to set up the voice agent
- Provide material about the agent’s “hero” use cases or unique capabilities to be included in the product’s education flow
- If an agent provides a voice history, customers should have access to view and manage their voice history.
In multi-agent experiences, customers should always know what agent they are talking to. Agent attribution may be explicit (e.g. colors, logos), or it may be indicated by differentiated visual and sound cues. Attribution can also include both personality and behavioral characteristics unique to an agent.
- Branding...a little bit goes a long way. Be aware of the effect of adding too many distracting branding personas.
- The wake word is a strong brand indicator, and the choice of wake word is an important part of the experience.
- Visual attribution can provide a better customer experience in many cases. Use verbal attribution only when visual cues are not available or when it is of critical importance to know (for example when presenting personal or sensitive information, or when the veracity of information is crucial).
