Smart Speakers Have 97 Percent Satisfaction Rate in India: Accenture

 Standalone voice assistants - or smart speakers - are one of the fastest adopted technologies in India and have a 97 percent satisfaction rate among Indian consumers, according to a report from Accenture.

Half of online consumers globally now use digital voice assistants, led by emerging markets such as India with 72 percent adoption, said the report titled "Reshape to Relevance". 

"With increasing adoption and satisfaction levels of smart speaker technology in India, we will see digital voice assistants influencing the whole consumer technology and service ecosystem in a way that no other device, including smartphones, has done before," said Aditya Chaudhuri, Managing Director and lead in Accenture's Communications, Media & Technology practice in India.

"As consumers shift behaviours from smartphones to voice assistants, there's a clear expectation that smart speakers will take on progressively complex workloads in the future," Chaudhuri added.

The findings are based on a global survey of 22,500 consumers across 21 countries, including 1,000 consumers from India.

The survey showed that 96 percent of Indian consumers expect their home device purchases, such as smart TVs or computers, to be based on ease of integration with their standalone smart speaker.

The relevance of smart speakers is reflected in consumers' expectations to use these devices for more advanced tasks beyond routine activities like voice calling, playing music or reading eBooks, and accessing news. 

In the US, the use of smart speakers such as Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod has already outstripped embedded digital voice assistant (DVA) use in smartphones and other devices, the findings showed. 

Globally, consumers see value in voice assistants managing home security (61 percent of respondents), providing connected home automation (59 percent), paying bills and providing payment alerts (55 percent) -- even making restaurant reservations (53 percent) and providing access to virtual medical advice (52 percent). 

However, trust is a potential impediment to greater adoption of smart speakers, with 41 percent of consumers globally citing privacy concerns and 40 percent citing security concerns with the technology, the results showed.