Daniel BergWhen you think of computer-generated voices, you might consider a few familiar subjects, such as Siri, Alexa, or Google assistant. However, given the latest technological advancements, there is now a new generation of text-to-speech voices with robotic sounds and intonations.
These robotic intonations and sounds are not just human-like but sound exactly like a natural human being and are so real that you can not even differentiate whether it’s a person or a robot.
These evolutions have tremendous implications for the L&D (learning and development) industry, which earlier had to employ agencies, voiceover artists, or employees to record training content.
Keep reading this article to learn more about the advantages of the adoption of text-to-speech in the L&D industry.
What Do We Mean By Text-To-Speech?
TTS, popularly known as text-to-speech technology, transforms text into voice. While text-to-speech technology was averagely efficient in the initial days, the advent of artificial intelligence and deep learning has entirely modified the scenario.
As it stands, modern, highly-advanced machines can now harness different speech patterns from various databases.
This sound or speech remains synonymous with realistic sounds and responds to pronunciation, pitch, frequency, etc.
In addition, since text-to-speech voice assistive technology skillfully analyzes the text and the related speech constraints, businesses, especially in the L&D industry, widely use it to improve user experience.
One of the prominent technologies employed for text-to-speech conversion is OCR (Optical Character Recognition), which transforms the text from photos or handwritten records into a machine-encrypted reader. This machine-encrypted text can then be read audibly by the text-to-speech tools.
Furthermore, it is significant that text-to-speech is entirely computer-generated. Therefore, it is appropriate for working with every online device competent for digital interaction, including tablets, computers, laptops, and smartphones.
Benefits of Using Text-to-Speech in L&D
Mentioned hereunder are some of the top benefits of employing text-to-speech in L&D.
Improved cost efficiencies
Gone are the times when basic printed training modules did the job. Nowadays, the most fascinating, effortlessly digestible training sessions depend on the leveraging power of video content. And high-quality videos are bound to doom without powerful voiceovers that earlier would cost businesses a fortune.
By switching to text-to-speech voices for your L&D modules, you can better optimize your budget. Furthermore, by employing text-to-speech for your training videos, you can create more training content at a reduced cost to your business.
Enhanced training quality
The content you create for learning and development is usually the initial touch-point a new employee learns when they are onboarded to your company.
Text-to-speech voices can assist you in creating interactive, high-quality, amusing training modules, conveying your brand as proficient, contemporary, and competitive.
Increased engagement
Non-realistic, robot-like voices are difficult for individuals to bear, divert from the quality of the training content, and usually lead to disengagement.
On the other hand, with a human-sounding text-to-speech voice in your learning and development modules, you can effortlessly create and sustain your company’s employee or managerial training content and learning materials.
In addition, these text-to-speech avatars come in a combination of styles and diverse genders to assist you in breaking up more protracted training modules into easily-inferrable training lessons.
Furthermore, you can tailor your learning and development material by allocating a separate avatar to a particular subject and developing interactive learning experiences that boost employee engagement and keep them interested and involved with your content.
Increased productivity
With voice production firms, you can usually hire only one individual to record their voice in a studio at a time. However, by employing a text-to-speech voice avatar, your business can build numerous voiceovers using the same voice simultaneously.
Moreover, with text-to-speech voices, you can save your company’s valuable time and money, create consistent modules, and increase the productivity levels of your workforce.
Effortlessly edit evergreen content
Making employee training and learning and development videos is not a one-time event. Instead, you must keep editing them invariably.
For instance, if you create a training video regarding offering refunds through your online website, and the actual video recording employs the word ‘click start’ and if the mechanisms are modified to the word ‘go,’ your training video and audio need to mirror these changes as well.
Finding the same voice artist for a one-word modification is excessively costly and time-consuming. However, with text-to-speech voice technology, you can make easy modifications to the voiceovers at any point you want and implement those changes and redownload the video immediately.
Furthermore, no matter the size of your business, using text-to-speech voices for your L&D helps you stay on top of these modifications with just one click.
Organization-specific content
Most companies using professional voice production services get new voice artists allocated for each project or have trouble tracking down the same voice artist from years ago, which can sometimes be nerve-wracking.
However, you can steer clear of all such issues by using text-to-speech voice technology. Also, with the accessibility of text-to-speech avatars, you can quickly create organization-specific content to onboard new employees faster than ever.
The Bottom Line
To sum up, we can say that text-to-speech voice technology provides a new option for L&D divisions looking to reduce their turnaround time, expenses, and difficulties associated with recording voiceovers for L&D training content.
In addition, with this new human-sounding text-to-speech technology, L&D specialists can translate their online content into natural speech with just one click, facilitating quicker content creation and consequently better employee efficiency and efficient workflows.
