The following results are from a survey that we conducted to understand if and how voice enabled devices can play a role in the customer journey for home buyers. Our client is the largest home builder in America and is always thirsty for data that can help them make smarter marketing and business decisions.

We also wanted to propose a voice app idea to the targeted audience and understand how they felt about the emerging technology concept.

We’ll show you how we used the survey to not only validate the idea, but to start identifying potential features and functionalities of the voice app.

Lastly, we’ll show you how we also used the survey results to create new content ideas that are more likely to resonate with our clients’ audience.

The age breakdown of respondents who fully completed the survey were as follows:

Respondent Age Breakdown

For the survey, we focused on the following regions: West, Midwest, and South. The location breakdown of respondents who fully completed the survey were as follows:

Respondent Location Breakdown

Our first question was one of our screener questions. For this question, we were looking to recruit respondents who were somewhat-to-100% likely to use their voice to interact with an Amazon Echo or other voice enabled device within the next year.

Our second question was our final screener question. For this question, we were looking to narrow down our target audience to just home owners.

Now that we were only talking to home owners that use (or are likely to use) voice enabled devices, we wanted to present the voice app concept to gather some valuable feedback and insight. We were looking to identify how many respondents would use an Amazon Echo, Google Home, etc. related voice app that could access all documentation pertaining to their new home (such as warranties, appliance models, etc.).

For our fourth question, we were looking to identify how valuable respondents would consider a voice app such as this.

For our fifth question, we were looking to identify in what scenarios respondents might use this voice app.

For our sixth question, we were looking to identify how comfortable respondents felt they were with technology.

For our seventh question, we were looking to identify how influential having a voice app like this would be when deciding to purchase a new home, or with whom they would purchase one with.

For our eighth and final question, we were looking to identify the biggest frustrations that respondents had when buying a new home.

Through the data we collected, we were able to develop the following content ideas based around the information we discovered in question #8 regarding respondents biggest frustrations when buying a new home.

• Develop content around: Time / how long the process takes (6.5% of respondents listed this as their biggest frustration)
  • How to manage the ‘wait’ from closing to moving in
  • Tips on how to reduce the time from closing to moving in (or the entire overall process)

• Develop content around: Price / Cost / Money (21.7% of respondents listed this as their biggest frustration)
  • Tips on how you can save money throughout the home buying (or building) process
  • Areas you can save money when purchasing (or building) a new home

• Develop content around: Loans / Financing / Banks / Mortgages (These issues combined accounted for 10.2% of respondents biggest frustrations)
  • How to get the best rates from banks and mortgage companies
  • General content around mortgages, loans, financing, etc.

• Develop content around: Various paperwork / processes (7.5% of respondents listed this as their biggest frustration)
  • How to prepare for all the paperwork when buying a new home

• Develop content around: Finding the right house (size, layout, etc.) (9.6% of respondents listed this as their biggest frustration)
  • Guides on finding the perfect house for you
  • Create an interactive quiz to find out if building a home is the right choice for you vs buying

• Create an infographic around the cost of buying a new home vs building one

We were also able to identify the following voice app related recommendations.

• Overall interest in a voice app:
  • About 81% of respondents said they would consider a voice app like this somewhat-to-extremely valuable
    • With 12% saying they would consider it extremely valuable
  • About 70% of respondents said they would possibly-to-definitely use this voice app if it existed
    • With 22.1% saying they would very likely-to-definitely use it if it existed

• Possible Alexa Skill features
  • ‘Home Control’ – being able to include some ‘home control’ features in this voice app would be very beneficial
    • These features could include: TV, AC, alarm and/or security control, etc.
      • A more focused survey on voice app features could also provide more ideas from potential customers as well
    • 8.3% of respondents said this (home control) would be how they use a voice app like this

• Insurance / warranty information
  • This was the most common answer provided by respondents for how they would use a voice app like this (9.7%)
  • Note: another 6.4% said that they would use this voice app for broken appliances which would most likely tie into insurance / warranty information

It is clear from the data that voice apps can definitely play a role in the home buying process. The survey not only validated our client’s voice app idea, it also provided useful features and desired functionality directly from the target audience. Interested in running a survey like this? You can use your existing email list to survey your customers or anonymously recruit  respondents like we did in this example. Let us know your thoughts by scheduling a time to chat