We Asked WBUR's Audience About Smart Speakers. Here's What We Found

How is WBUR's audience using — and not using — smart speakers?

It's a question that Project CITRUS — our yearlong initiative examining on-demand audio, smart speakers and more — wanted to dig into as we begin to develop a strategy for these devices and other emerging audio platforms (more simply, anything that's not the radio). So we created a survey.

The total number of responses to our survey. We set an initial goal of 1,000 responses, so we were exceedingly pleased to see that level of participation.

Thanks to the logical flow of our survey, we were able create and analyze four groups of people:

We will primarily focus on that first group, where "smart-speaker owners" and "WBUR listeners" overlap in the Venn diagram. They will of course provide some of the most useful and practical feedback.

The percentage of respondents who own a smart speaker.

One point of comparison for this figure is the most recent Smart Audio Report released by NPR and Edison Research, which found 21% of Americans age 18 and up own a smart speaker.

It's not all that surprising that our survey yielded a higher figure here — this is a self-selecting group of people who engage regularly with WBUR — but the fact that it's nearly double is certainly worth noting.

The percentage of respondents who have listened to WBUR on their smart speakers. This was another encouraging statistic.

WBUR currently offers two ways to listen via smart speaker:

We've done some modest promotion around these, but generally it's been a soft launch. Nevertheless, listeners have found WBUR content on their smart speakers.

Of course, we'd like to boost that number even higher. It will be interesting to see if it increases when we survey our audience again.

We now come to our most anticipated question: "How do you think the WBUR smart-speaker listening experience could be improved?"

Many people, we were pleased to hear, are already quite satisfied. In fact, 85% of the group said the listening experience was "excellent" or "very good." Of course, given that smart speakers have emerged as a radio replacement, this makes sense. The devices make the simple experience of listening to the radio even simpler; you say "play WBUR" and WBUR plays.

But there's also room for improvement. Some of the most common requests from listeners included:

As we read through the survey's free-form responses, we saw several patterns emerge around how people are using their smart speakers to listen to WBUR. We loosely defined a few listener types, and also highlighted specific comments that help illustrate each group's smart-speaker attitudes and habits. (Note: Some respondent comments have been lightly edited for clarity and style.)

A sizable group of WBUR smart-speaker listeners see the device as a cutting-edge replacement for their traditional radio. They use it primarily — in many cases exclusively — to listen to the livestream, which, again, is simply the FM broadcast in a digital format.

Radio replacers appreciate the convenience — "no hands!" — as well as the improved fidelity — "no static!" — offered by their smart speakers. At the same time, many reported frustrations at the discrepancies between the smart speaker and radio experiences; for instance, a recurring advertisement (what we call a "preroll") precedes each livestream listen, something you'd never hear on the radio.

We hypothesize that this user is mostly uninterested in digging deeper into their smart speaker's capabilities, or has attempted to do so and given up. In short, while the hardware has changed, the end goal — "I want my WBUR!" — remains the same.

Smart speakers allow people to listen to WBUR anywhere — a distinct advantage over traditional radios. We heard from several WBUR listeners who live outside of New England and who appreciated the devices' capacity to take geography out of the equation.

Whereas radio replacers like to "set it and forget it," power users engage with their smart speakers in a deeper and more sophisticated manner.

Their survey feedback suggests they are curious about their smart speakers and are trying to get the most out of them. They enjoy interacting with WBUR, but also think the experience could be enhanced.

Many users expressed that smart speakers can't quite meet their expectations. These expectations could merely be perceived by the user, or explicitly promised by the manufacturer. In some cases, this means users are turning to their smart speakers less, despite having an earnest curiosity about the technology and its potential uses. This frustration, in turn, thwarts deeper engagement with WBUR content.

Another open-ended question asked what people disliked about using their smart speaker. It yielded a range of frustrations, but one in particular came up over and over again: their device is unable to satisfactorily interpret a request.

We highlight this finding because it will be top of mind as we develop a more conversational and helpful experience. In other words, let's make smart assistants act like smart tools that can assist you. It calls to mind some useful tips from the BBC's voice and AI team for handling user utterances: don't keep people "stuck in error loops"; keep an interaction progressing toward the desired intent; and take the blame when it's not.

Our survey indicates there's unease about these devices, even among active users. They repeated phrases like: "it's listening to us all the time," "they are tracking me," and "Big Brother."

Privacy concerns around smart devices and voice assistants have been well-documented (Amazon, for example, weighed in on the subject at its recent product launch event). We're also in a moment of significant tension surrounding big tech companies, data, and security more broadly. This all poses significant hurdles for public media outlets like WBUR, whose relationship with their audience is predicated upon a strong sense of trust.