When Google smart speakers and Amazon’s Alexa originally came out, many experts wrote them off as a piece of technology that was likely to fade away. However, as the technology has improved, voice control has not only offered greater use cases but has engrained itself in day-to-day life.
One area where voice control hasn’t made huge inroads just yet is online gaming. That’s slowly changing as the integration is just getting underway. Is this going to play a big part in online gaming in the future? We’re going to take a closer look.
Why Hasn’t Voice Control Been Integrated Yet?
In many ways, it’s not a huge surprise that voice control has not been a big part of online gambling just yet. There are two main reasons for it: for one, online gaming companies tend to be slow to adopt the technology. And two, online casinos just haven’t found a huge need for it just yet.
Starting with the first, online gaming tends to move at a snail’s pace when it comes to technological innovations. Things have gotten much better these days but the reality is that you’ll still find many sportsbooks that haven’t updated their site for years. Casinos tend to be better at this but the general mindset is, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. We’ll eventually see them start to tinker with this and see what voice control can do, but right now, very few customers are asking for this and very few casinos are even exploring what can be done with it.
And that brings us to the second point: there isn’t a great use case for this year, however, the voice recognition market is projected to grow by $16.46b in 2025, and 8.4 billion people are projected to own voice-assistants by 2024, compared to 4.2 billion in 2020. Eventually, we might see something that makes sense but as of now, we only really see the use case to tell Siri to open an app or to open a website where you can play. That’s about it. Customers need to be introduced to the use cases and then they might start to understand what they’re missing out on if they don’t use it.
Fetching Apps, Logging In
The most basic and simplest use case for voice control is to open up an app or website and log in. On the surface, this might seem like something you can do with the click of a mouse but for some people, they get used to voice assistants, and this can help. Think of it this way: you don’t need to have voice control to turn on your TV as all it replaces is pushing a button on a remote. However, it’s also kind of cool and handy that if you shout at your iPhone speaker or Android speaker, it can turn on and prep the TV for you.
The same goes with online casino gaming and voice assistants: this will be the most basic use case.
Voice search — bringing you a more natural way to search for your favorite games, bonuses & more.
Voice Search
The next level with voice assistants will be the ability to search.
When you’re sifting through casinos, trying to find which game to play, having voice search can make your life that much easier. You can think of the game in your head but sometimes it’s hard to find. For example, maybe Keno has its own section or maybe it’s filed away somewhere that it’s not immediately obvious. Well, with a voice assistant, you just shout at it and it does the legwork for you.
This will also be particularly useful when you’re looking for various types of online casino games. Let’s say you aren’t sure which type of slots game you want to play, so you can say “hey Google, show me movie-themed slots that are available”. After that, the voice assistant and the AI does the work for you rather than you sitting there sifting and scrolling. It’ll save you time and that’s the main reason why people use these speakers.
Deposits, Withdrawals
Another great use case for voice assistants will eventually be the deposits and withdrawals. Right now, the process is still a bit cumbersome and that’s partially necessary because of security reasons. But let’s say we live in the perfect utopia at some point down the road and security is taken care of. How nice would it be to just shout at Siri and say “Deposit $100 into the online casino for me” or to say “Alexa, withdraw all of my winnings back to my bank account”.
These are the types of processes where these voice assistants thrive as they are replacing very basic things. Not a lot is involved other than executing a command. Why put yourself through the arduous procedures when your assistant can do the work for you?
Customer Service
Lastly, one area where voice assistants can really help out is customer service. Many times, customers are searching for where customer support is to be found. Does the online casino offer live chat? Can you speak to an agent to get some help? Are they even open for support at these hours?
In the future, all you’ll have to do is ask your voice assistant to put you in touch with customer service and they’ll do the dialing and connecting for you. It’ll be easy-peasy as you’ll essentially be connected right into a phone call. That’ll cut out a lot of the frustration that’s there now and put you directly in touch with staff who can resolve your issues. We’re still a long way away from things like this but that’s what the future holds for voice control and online casino gaming.
