Why You Should Ask Your Toaster To Tell Your Future

Did you ever have a fam­i­ly mem­ber who could pre­dict the weath­er because their knee act­ed up? Or a best friend who could fin­ish your sen­tences, and knew exact­ly when a Caramel Mac­chi­a­to was just what you need­ed to pick up your spir­its? Well, you may soon be look­ing at a mech­a­nised ver­sion of that mate or aun­tie soon enough.

Accord­ing to AdWeek, the demand among con­sumers for near-instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion is push­ing inno­va­tors to explore ways they can use voice tech­nol­o­gy to empow­er pre­dic­tive con­sump­tion. For exam­ple, your wash­ing machine could order laun­dry deter­gent on your behalf when sup­plies are get­ting low—even before you notice a drop in lev­els your­self. Or a taxi com­pa­ny could instant­ly adjust your col­lec­tion time for an air­port trans­fer in your dig­i­tal diary, based on live traf­fic conditions.

Tak­ing this a step fur­ther, the wash­ing machine could learn whether you pre­fer val­ue or high qual­i­ty when select­ing your deter­gent, and search for your pur­chase based on price or effec­tive­ness considerations.

This is about tak­ing the require­ment to “ask” for some­thing and remov­ing that step in the chain, so that things are sim­ply brought to the con­sumer, thus eras­ing the fric­tion of need­ing con­sumer input.

Steps have already been tak­en over the past year to bring us clos­er to instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion con­sump­tion. Amazon’s Prime Now and Dash but­tons are two such inno­va­tions, requir­ing a mere scan or click of the but­ton to secure goods at a rapid rate. But this still needs a cus­tomer action to complete.

We have seen the ways that pre­dic­tive tech­nol­o­gy and machine learn­ing affect the expe­ri­ence busi­ness. At Adobe, Sen­sei is at the heart of what we do to help cus­tomers learn and inno­vate every­thing from their pro­gram­mat­ic adver­tis­ing tar­get­ing and opti­mis­ing, through to way they eval­u­ate their web pres­ence to make the steps from search to pur­chase faster and eas­i­er to com­plete. Isn’t it time the every­day home expe­ri­ences the same ease and con­ve­nience (and that the mar­keter steps up to take advan­tage of this)?

What impact do you think pre­dic­tive tech­nol­o­gy will make on your busi­ness? Are you tak­ing steps to take advan­tage of instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion demands to meet the needs of your con­sumer base?