Voice commerce: a complete guide with implementation best practices

Voice commerce is gaining ground as shoppers increasingly turn to voice-enabled virtual assistants to check prices, buy goods, and find information about products or orders hands-free. Along with voice commerce’s growth, proactive retailers are looking for ways to enable these interactions, turning to ecommerce development services to integrate natural language processing into their ecommerce platforms and build solutions that support voice-activated shopping experiences. If you’re planning to add voice commerce capabilities to your digital ecosystem, read on to understand the concept, common applications, and benefits that the technology can bring.

How voice commerce works

Voice commerce is enabled by a set of machine learning technologies, including speech recognition, natural language processing (NLP), and text-to-speech (TTS), that allow digital assistants to interpret spoken commands and then perform specific actions, such as search for products, add items to a cart, complete purchases, and deliver personalized recommendations.

Here’s what happens when a customer uses a voice-enabled device for order placement, one of its many applications:

• The spoken command is converted into text with the help of voice recognition technology
• An NLP tool interprets user intent and extracts relevant data, such as product type, quantity, or customer preferences
• The voice commerce system interprets the request and retrieves relevant information from the ecommerce platform
• The response of the ecommerce system is converted into an audible output using TTS technology
• Once confirmed, the transaction is completed using the customer’s stored payment information

How to use voice commerce at each customer journey stage

V-commerce can be used across the entire customer journey, helping streamline product discovery, purchasing, and customer service experience.

1. Awareness & discovery

   Shoppers can use voice-enabled devices to find and explore products, request product details and reviews, or ask for suggestions based on color, category, or occasion. Voice assistants can highlight current deals, helping retailers introduce more relevant products early in the decision-making process. Moreover, when powered by dedicated artificial intelligence algorithms, these assistants can provide personalized recommendations based on a consumer’s shopping history.

2. Consideration & evaluation

   At this stage, users typically compare product options with a high intention to buy using voice commands to check pricing across multiple retailers, confirm product availability, or add items to a wish list or a shopping cart.

3. Purchase

   Voice commerce assistants can autonomously handle ordering, particularly for repeat or routine purchases, with customers confirming the purchase with a verbal command. 

4. Post-purchase

   Voice assistants can also handle routine customer service tasks, reducing pressure on customer support teams, by managing customers’ requests for delivery updates, order statuses, or product returns.

Benefits of voice commerce

Voice commerce offers retailers multiple advantages, enabling them to boost operational efficiency, better meet customer demands, and improve customer experiences through faster order completion, simplified interactions, and personalized recommendations.

Increased sales & repeat purchases

Voice commerce streamlines purchases that require low involvement, like reordering known items, allowing customers to skip browsing and complete transactions faster. Drawing on customer data such as order history and preferences, voice assistants can prompt relevant product recommendations, increasing order value and frequency.

Enhanced customer satisfaction

By eliminating screens and reducing steps like product search, cart navigation, and manual checkout, voice commerce offers a more convenient customer experience. In addition, thanks to personalized shopping experiences and voice-enabled support features, store owners can increase customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.

A new source of customer insights

By analyzing conversational queries through voice analytics, retailers gain a new perspective into customers' wants, preferences, and the way they phrase their needs. Companies can use these insights to improve SEO, refine product naming, and update website content. Over time, chatbots and voice agents trained on this data can deliver even more accurate, context-aware responses.

Stronger brand differentiation

Retailers who adopt the new technology, like voice commerce, early can distinguish themselves in saturated markets, particularly among younger demographics who actively switch between devices, apps, and channels. Enabling voice interactions demonstrates a commitment to meeting customer expectations and positions the brand as forward-thinking.

Increased customer convenience

Voice commerce helps retailers enable hands-free interactions, like making purchases or checking delivery status, while multitasking, driving, or cooking. Moreover, thanks to v-commerce, retailers can make online shopping inclusive and accessible to users with visual impairments or physical limitations.

Challenges of voice commerce

Limited adoption

The use of voice commerce solutions depends on consumers’ willingness to take up this interaction format. But since it’s still a relatively new technology, many users hesitate to make purchases through it, which limits businesses’ ability to reach their target audience.

Solution:

Retailers can reduce customers’ reservations by educating them about voice functionality through tutorials, FAQs, and onboarding guides, using simpler use cases like checking order status or reordering familiar items as examples. Promoting voice shopping through discounts or exclusive offers can also help accelerate its adoption across different user segments.

Privacy & data security concerns

Voice commerce systems rely on microphones that listen for activation cues. Due to this always-on functionality, some people worry about being constantly monitored and their voice data shared with third parties. Others are concerned about eavesdropping when they speak sensitive information out loud or about their relatives or children making unintended purchases through the shared device.

Solution:

To address these concerns, retailers should work only with trusted voice platforms that offer transparent privacy controls, including microphone muting, consent-based data storage, and clear explanations of what data is collected and why. Adding multi-step verification for high-value transactions and allowing users to manage or delete voice data can further increase their trust.

Accuracy & misinterpretation issues

Voice systems can mishear commands, especially in noisy environments, and fail to properly interpret accents or comprehend fast speech. Errors stemming from misinterpretation can lead to mistakes and reduce customer satisfaction.

Solution:

Retailers can enhance voice detection accuracy by selecting voice commerce platforms that provide advanced natural language processing and reliable speech recognition capabilities out of the box. In addition, to ensure continuous improvement, it’s important to choose solutions that support ongoing learning based on real customer interactions. It’s also crucial to include fallback responses and voice-based confirmations at critical steps to prevent errors and reduce friction.

Integration limitations

Many ecommerce systems were not built to support voice interactions. Connecting voice channels to legacy platforms, inventory databases, and payment gateways can be a complex process.

Solution:

Many ecommerce platforms weren’t originally built with voice capabilities in mind, so integrating voice features often requires additional development effort. This can involve creating APIs to expose selected functionalities of legacy systems, implementing connector components, and introducing extensions to support voice-specific requests without altering the code. Middleware can also help connect voice platforms with more outdated legacy ecommerce infrastructure.

Retailers planning to enable voice commerce can also consider migrating to modern modular architectures, such as headless commerce. These architectures allow for more flexible integration of voice commerce solutions with an ecommerce system, making it easier to add voice-driven capabilities to specific areas, like checking order status or reordering frequently purchased items, without reworking the entire backend logic.

Voice commerce best practices

The voice commerce technology has its own logic for handling spoken customer requests, so here are some practical steps to help you ensure it works effectively within your digital ecosystem.

Optimize content for voice search

Compared to typed searches, voice queries are typically lengthier and more conversational. For voice assistants to deliver relevant results, it’s essential to adjust product content to match how people speak.

• Use long-tail, question-based keywords
• Keep product descriptions clear, concise, and well-structured, with key specs and benefits presented early in the copy
• Avoid rarely used jargon in product titles and descriptions that can confuse voice systems or customers unfamiliar with the terminology
• Use schema markup to structure product information in a way that voice assistants can access and interpret content more effectively, helping them return accurate and relevant responses

Streamline the purchase flow

Customers using voice commands prioritize simplicity and speed when making purchases. Reducing the number of steps in the shopping process helps prevent drop-off and improves the user experience.

• Limit confirmation steps while maintaining security measures like voice authentication or passphrases
• Have the voice system respond with a helpful, pre-written message when it can’t process or interpret the customer’s command
• Enable cart-free transactions when possible for products the customer has already purchased in the past

Enable voice-assisted customer support

When properly configured, voice assistants can handle routine service requests on their own, eliminating the need for human intervention and reducing pressure on support teams.

• Enable the voice assistant to access relevant data sources, such as order management systems and policy databases, to provide accurate answers to common queries like order status or return policies
• Update scripts as products, services, or policies change
• Use natural phrasing in responses so answers feel conversational and clear
• Enable escalation paths that transfer customers to a live agent if the system can’t resolve a certain issue
• Monitor which questions go unanswered and expand the assistant’s knowledge base to cover them

Encourage repeat purchases

Make it easier for returning customers to reorder familiar products using simple voice commands. This approach works particularly well for categories like groceries, pet supplies, health products, cleaning goods, and office essentials.

• Configure your ecommerce and voice commerce platforms to securely exchange payment and shipping information stored in customer profiles so that voice assistants could quickly retrieve necessary details, minimizing the need for customers to repeat themselves
• Use voice prompts to remind customers when a replenishable item may be running low
• Offer targeted incentives, such as a discount on the next voice reorder or free shipping, for voice-initiated repeat purchases

Track voice commerce performance & customer data

With voice commerce functionality in place, companies need to monitor customer interactions with it to identify gaps, uncover trends, and adjust strategy based on the outcomes.

• Monitor voice-initiated searches, orders, support requests, and conversion rates 
• Categorize the collected data by device type, e.g., smartphones or smart speakers, time of day, or customer segment, to identify peak usage times, compare how often voice commerce is used, and detect drop-off points in voice interactions to prioritize improvements
• Analyze voice transcripts to uncover frequent requests and questions
• Survey customers based on their satisfaction with the experience of placing orders through voice commerce channels
• Use collected data to improve algorithms, update FAQs, or adjust purchase flows
• Use behavioral insights to develop advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing strategies

To sum up

Today’s consumers place orders not only through websites and apps, but also through voice-enabled assistants like Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Copilot integrated into phones, smart speakers, and in-car systems. Retailers like Walmart have already adopted voice commerce, introducing features that let shoppers reorder groceries or check inventory using natural speech. As these capabilities have become widespread among major players, other stores are also looking to adapt them to stay competitive and aligned with evolving consumer expectations.

With voice recognition technology and generative AI improving, voice commerce is expected to grow in popularity, especially among younger customers. To keep pace with this shift, retailers need to invest in tailored solutions that support voice-enabled shopping. If you are planning to add voice commerce to your ecommerce digital ecosystem, consider turning to Iflexion. With a proven track record in ecommerce development, Iflexion builds and implements solutions that enhance customer experience and drive business growth.