Thanks at least in part to Apple’s Siri, con­sumers are becom­ing more com­fort­able with voice tech­nol­o­gy, but, for now, voice is still not com­plete­ly wide­spread in brand­ed appli­ca­tions. Brands that incor­po­rate voice can still look like they’re ahead of the curve. Voice has oth­er dis­tinct advan­tages: It enables brands to pro­vide util­i­ty to cus­tomers, but also have fun with them. But, experts say, the key to suc­cess with voice lies in mak­ing con­sumers’ lives eas­i­er.

Piz­za chain Domino’s recent­ly rolled out its vir­tu­al voice order­ing assis­tant, Dom, on a nation­al scale, which prompt­ed plen­ty of head­lines draw­ing com­par­isons to Apple’s voice assis­tant, Siri.

Dom is per­haps a bit more focused than Siri – he takes orders for car­ry­out or deliv­ery, han­dles saved orders, sug­gests meal addi­tions and finds coupons. But he’s cer­tain­ly not a one-trick pony, as this Domino’s video attests.

Getting To Know Dom

Accord­ing to Domino’s spokesman Chris Bran­don, the brand launched Dom in beta in June in part­ner­ship with speech and imag­ing soft­ware com­pa­ny Nuance Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Domino’s has spent the ensu­ing months mak­ing sure Dom takes accu­rate orders and gives cus­tomers a good expe­ri­ence over­all.

“Now that we have ensured that part is in good shape, we are able to roll out more about Dom and his per­son­al­i­ty and respons­es that you’ll hear from him in addi­tion to just tak­ing orders and all that,” Bran­don said.

In oth­er words, con­sumers who ask Dom ques­tions not relat­ed to their piz­za orders will get “sur­pris­ing, unex­pect­ed respons­es” that “cus­tomers will have fun with as they’re get­ting to know Dom,” Bran­don said.

Per a press release, some of those addi­tion­al respons­es include, “I’m many updates wis­er than when I first start­ed,” “My moth­er­board and father­board raised me right,” and, “Let’s get this par­ty start­ed.”

Accord­ing to Bran­don, 45 per­cent of Domino’s U.S. sales now come through dig­i­tal and mobile is the chain’s fastest grow­ing order­ing method by far.

Of the app and voice recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy, Anna Bager, vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Mobile Mar­ket­ing Cen­ter of Excel­lence at the IAB, said, “It’s great that Domino’s is doing this and it will serve them well. It will increase usage immense­ly. Using voice-acti­va­tion is a smart move.”

Voice Technology No Longer Sci-Fi, Thanks To Siri

Accord­ing to Bager, voice acti­va­tions with­in apps can be used to serve mar­keters in one of two ways: to order some­thing, such as Domino’s is doing with Dom, or to con­trol ele­ments in a house or car, like the Wi-Fi Smart Ther­mo­stat with Voice Con­trol from Hon­ey­well.

In short, any voice tech­nol­o­gy appli­ca­tion that helps increase util­i­ty and becomes use­ful in con­sumers’ dai­ly lives is “excel­lent for brand build­ing in gen­er­al,” Bager said.

What’s more, Bager notes con­sumers are more used to voice tech­nol­o­gy than they were a few years ago thanks in large part to Siri.

“I think the fact that we have Siri now has made users aware they can use the func­tion­al­i­ty and a lot of peo­ple use Siri, so it’s not so sci-fi-ish,” she said.

Bran­don doesn’t agree com­plete­ly.

In fact, he doesn’t see Siri as paving the way for Dom, but rather attrib­ut­es the rise of Domino’s vir­tu­al order­ing assis­tant to “the Domino’s brand antic­i­pat­ing trends and see­ing voice as the future…because tech­nol­o­gy is one of Domino’s top pri­or­i­ties.”

Bran­don said Domino’s is keen­ly aware that voice “seems to be the future” and notes the brand “want­ed to be in front of that and inno­vate against that and be kind of one of the first to real­ly debut this.”

Bran­don did not pro­vide a num­ber of users who have placed orders via Dom to date, but the app itself has 5 mil­lion to 10 mil­lion down­loads, per Google Play.

More Brands Using Voice Technology

Domino’s cer­tain­ly isn’t the first brand out­side of Apple to intro­duce voice tech­nol­o­gy.

Jason Menke, vice pres­i­dent of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Wells Far­go Vir­tu­al Chan­nels, said about 300 Wells Far­go team mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ed in two phas­es of a voice bank­ing pilot in 2013 in which the bank­ing brand first test­ed nav­i­ga­tion­al and bal­ance inquiry func­tion­al­i­ty. This allowed team mem­bers to ask ques­tions like, “How much did I spend last month?” or “How much mon­ey was deposit­ed into my account yes­ter­day?” or “How much did I spend at Star­bucks last week?” A sec­ond phase of the pilot includ­ed quotes for stocks and index­es, charts and mar­ket news, Menke says.

“We sur­veyed team mem­bers after the pilot and got a tremen­dous amount of feed­back about what worked, what didn’t, and what else was need­ed,” Menke said. “We’re cur­rent­ly review­ing and incor­po­rat­ing this feed­back as we think through prod­uct devel­op­ment next steps, but haven’t announced any future plans for voice bank­ing at this time.”

In addi­tion, air­line Jet­Blue report­ed­ly launched a voice-acti­vat­ed mobile ad and Ford’s Sync AppLink in-car con­nec­tiv­i­ty sys­tem part­nered with park­ing space find­ing app Parko­pe­dia to allow dri­vers to locate near­by park­ing and pric­ing by using voice com­mands.

But regard­less of whether Siri is direct­ly respon­si­ble for inspir­ing addi­tion­al voice acti­va­tions, the mar­ket is clear­ly see­ing more.

Apple intro­duced its intel­li­gent assis­tant in 2011 along with the iPhone 4S. In a press release at the time, Apple said Siri “helps you get things done just by ask­ing.”

Google has since fol­lowed with OK Google, which allows users to use their voic­es on the Google app or Chrome to do things like search, get direc­tions and cre­ate reminders, Google said, and the Win­dows Phone has its own vir­tu­al assis­tant, Cor­tana, which, Win­dows says, “will even chat with you,” in addi­tion to “mak­ing calls, remind­ing you to pick up your dry clean­ing [and] get­ting answers about sports scores, stock prices or ran­dom triv­ia.”

OK Google: ‘Send Me A Pizza’

Google also recent­ly released the results of a Mobile Voice Study, which looked at voice search habits among smart­phone users in the U.S. and found about 55 per­cent of teens use voice search every day.

Respon­dents most com­mon­ly use voice search to ask for direc­tions, but also use it to dic­tate text mes­sages, make phone calls, check the weath­er and “just for fun,” accord­ing to the study.

“We found that for teens, voice search comes as nat­u­ral­ly as check­ing social media and they’re get­ting very cre­ative about how (and where) they use it,” Google said in a press release. “The study gives us great ideas about new ways we could help peo­ple — maybe even help them find their keys and oth­er elu­sive objects.”

In addi­tion, 89 per­cent of teens and 85 per­cent of adults said voice search will be “very com­mon” in the future.

And, in what could be very good news for Domino’s and Dom, when asked to “pick one thing you wish you could ask your phone to do for you,” Google says 45 per­cent of U.S. teens select­ed “send me a piz­za.”

What do you think about voice tech­nol­o­gy? Is it some­thing you’ve con­sid­ered incor­po­rat­ing in your own brand­ed chan­nels?