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Career artifact · Alexa era

Harvard Business School

How to Talk to Your Customers in a Voice First World

A guest lecture for Harvard Business School's Moving Beyond DTC program about what changes when a brand can move beyond clicks and transactions—and speak directly with its customers.

Dave Isbitski teaching a Harvard Business School classroom beneath the title How to Talk to Your Customers in a Voice First World
Dave opens the January 23, 2020 lecture with its central question: how could brands talk directly to customers in a voice-first world?

Moving beyond the transaction

From direct-to-consumer to direct conversation

The direct-to-consumer model gave brands a more immediate relationship with customers through websites, apps, and social channels. My lecture looked one interface ahead: what happens when that relationship becomes a natural conversation?

I used Alexa's growing developer ecosystem to make the shift concrete. Voice was not simply another channel for placing an order. It could let a brand answer questions, provide utility, establish a recognizable personality, and become useful in moments when a screen was not the right interface.

“Voice is going to be like HTML. It's just the way people communicate with everyone and everything. … Now as a brand, you're not just buying things from me. You're having a conversation.” Dave Isbitski · Harvard Business School, 2020

The lecture's through line

A brand can be heard, not just seen.

01

Voice as an interface layer

Like the web, voice could become a common way people reach services, information, and brands.

02

Utility before novelty

The strongest voice experiences solved a real customer need without forcing another screen into the moment.

03

Conversation as relationship

A brand voice could answer, guide, and help—turning a one-way message into an ongoing exchange.

Inside the classroom

Dave Isbitski speaking to Harvard Business School students beneath a slide showing more than 100,000 Alexa skills and 500,000 developers
Showing the scale of the Alexa ecosystem: more than 100,000 skills and 500,000 developers building for and with Alexa.
Social recap from Matt Higgins quoting Dave Isbitski on voice, brands, and customer conversation at Harvard Business School
Matt Higgins shared Dave's central point from the Moving Beyond DTC classroom.

Program context

Explore the institutional record

Harvard Business School Newsroom January at HBS: SIPs Year Three Read the official 2020 program story → Amazon Alexa Developer Blog Five years of building for voice Explore the Alexa-era platform context →