Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a new feature as part of its text-to-speech offering Amazon Polly, aimed at giving brands greater control over their voice and persona.

Using the same technology behind Alexa, ‘Brand Voice’ allows brands to incorporate a unique vocal identity into products and services using a high-quality, Neural Text-to-Speech (NTTS) voice.

In other words, AWS is creating custom spokespeople.

AWS hopes that by allowing brands to more easily customise their unique voice, the technology can improve overall customer experience levels.

Speaking with B&T, AWS head of solution architecture for Australia and New Zealand Dr Peter Stanski said the technology could help give brands an edge when it comes to customer experience.

“It’s actually the evolution of the [Amazon Polly] service . The capability allows our customers to build a high-quality neural text to speech voice representation of the company’s brand, essentially their persona.

“It helps them to differentiate themselves inside this very crowded online digital space.”

Stanski pointed to research which shows 54 per cent of global companies believe customer experience platforms “just aren’t there”.

“Human experience platforms are often driven by AI and machine learning, which provide a lot of responsiveness,” Stanski said.

“This is what customers are actually looking for from organisations.”

NAB is one of the first companies globally to work with the new technology.

“We are looking to Amazon Connect to help us improve the experience customers have when they contact our call centers,” said NAB general manager of digital and assisted channels Laurent De Segur.

“For that reason, it was also important that the voice we created using Amazon Polly Brand Voice felt both uniquely NAB and consistent with our position and what our customers expect when they call us.

“We’re thrilled to be a global leader using this voice-first digital innovation – and even more excited to see how our customers interact with the voice and experience as we gradually roll this out.”