Alexa is Amazon’s cloud-based voice service which is available on hundreds of millions of devices both from Amazon and third-party device manufacturers. With Alexa, you can build natural voice experiences that offer customers a more intuitive way to interact with the technology they use every day. Amazon offers an API and documentation to build custom experiences for Alexa.
Alexa is Amazon’s cloud-based voice service which is available on hundreds of millions of devices both from Amazon and third-party device manufacturers. With Alexa, you can build natural voice experiences that offer customers a more intuitive way to interact with the technology they use every day. Amazon offers an API and documentation to build custom experiences for Alexa.
When using a custom skill, much like downloading an app to a smart phone, a skill can be enabled or disabled amazon Alexa devices. A custom skill can be built specifically for your business. It is another way for people to learn about your company’s brand. A company builds a website specifically designed for web visitors to learn more about or make a purchase from that business. A custom skill (or audio website) uses voice to interact with it which makes the voice design is extremely important. The custom skill should maintain a conversational and voice-friendly flow to guide and inform the consumer what things are possible to do within the skill.
Some key points to keep in mind when designing and building a custom skill.
Make sure you test the custom skill in different conversational ways. Ask other people to help test it as well, this will help make sure it flows properly doesn’t have any conversational gaps.
The custom skill should respond with extra information like asking questions after giving a response. For instance, if an someone asks for a joke, respond with a joke and also add to the response, something like, have you heard the one about the clowns. Make it entertaining, informational or fun.
The custom skill should handle, in a friendly way, any unknown responses. Try adding funny anecdotes or responses like:
- I am constantly learning new things and that is outside of my wheelhouse.
- Wow! You have stumped me with that question.
Offer random responses to keep the conversation moving.
Use responses based on the time of day for example, say, good evening, or have a wonderful afternoon, etc.
If the custom skill is user-friendly with a nice conversation flow, it should increase the amount of people using the custom skill which should make people want to share with others. You want more people using your custom skill just like you want more traffic to your website.
Custom Skill Ideas
In a sample skill named, “my great place“, someone can ask, my great place, for the latest deals and the custom skill would respond with something like:
“Okay, here is a list of deals for Saturday. Fifteen percent off widget one, and Fifty percent off widget two. Would you like to hear more?”
A skill conversation flow should use dialog specific to that business’ audience.
A skill can also ask someone to sign in to the skill with their amazon login. This can personalize responses using that person’s name to greet them. Using the skill permission capability, it can also offer them a way to contact via email address or to subscribe to an email list which can be automatically added to a mailing list on a mail provider (like mail chimp or convert kit).