Blog Category: Alexa Skills

Digital voice assistants like Amazon Echo are revolutionizing how people communicate with web content, advertising, and commerce. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple’s HomePod, Samsung’s Bixby, Microsoft Cortana, and China’s Chumenwenwen and Xiaoice are a few popular brands that are quickly becoming a part of our lives. 

Certain experts have predicted that 30% of consumer browsing will happen through voice interfaces by 2020. It is also anticipated that the assistant-provided audio entertainment and its consumption to grow considerably in the upcoming years. People are open to receiving helpful and relevant information through voice assistants. 

Apart from home usage, the vision for Alexa by Amazon covers all aspects. The Alexa Skills marketplace has progressed rapidly from 1,000 to 15,000 within a year in the Alexa Skill Store. The right time is now for businesses to get on board with Alexa skills development as it grows.

Leverage Alexa Skills for Businesses

Since Alexa Skills are fresh in the market, not many companies have entered the world of infinite possibilities just yet. It gives a lot of room to innovate and be the first to offer unique interaction for various business types. The Alexa Skills can put to use to gather information about a company or product, augment current mobile apps and web applications with voice-enabled digital services, or improvise customer experiences.

• Alexa voice assistants are capable of reshaping the brands’ and retailers’ connections with customers. 
• The consumers’ loyalty can shift from trusted brands to a trusted platform for better navigation among the vast ocean choices. 
• Re-ordered essentials will increase to households 
• Increasing creative audio content will advertise without irritating and losing the interest of the listeners. 
• The AI can improve the shopping experience with the gathered information on consumers’ preferences. 
• It can provide the portal for the unconstrained marketplace of news, entertainment, goods, and services.

Custom Alexa skills development is increasing user engagement for publishers, music services, and smart-home tech companies. Much other company’s top management and marketers should be considering developing custom Alexa Skills for their brand because

• It offers a personalized experience to the customers
• It offers an organic way of introducing a brand and its potential to the consumers 
• It makes way for plentiful opportunities for product enhancement, marketing, and advertising
• It helps to cultivate ad retain customer loyalty.

The right time to build Alexa skill is now!

When mobile app development is concerned, it is best to venture into the market after a little thought to your customers’ digital experience. We need to know skills for building Alexa Skills. Taking a strategic and meaningful approach alone adds more value to your customers.

Over the upcoming years, it can become more imperative for companies to understand this new technology and its application to various businesses. The fight over talent skilled in Alexa Skills or seeking development service from Alexa Skill Development Company will only increase. Voice interaction can become the chief way for people to interact with the internet very soon. Now that they have already taken residence in millions of homes, the unprecedented opportunities are appealing to the owners of the smart devices and other brands that offer information, entertainment, goods, and services. 

As of now, there’s no reason not to begin with Alexa Skills development for your business as soon as possible. The business benefits for commencing this early are abundant:

• Vast Market – Amazon Echo family has taken up almost 72% market share of present US smart speakers. With a multitude of connected devices and equipment from fridges, thermostats, lamps, door locks, and others that have the possibility of controlling through Alexa Voice Service API, the potential of Alexa skills market penetration is immeasurable.
• Safe investment – It is likely for Alexa to be the lead for some time and lingers on further advancements as it controls a considerable marketplace percentage already. Selecting to develop an Alexa Skills streamlines development from both the product approach and technical development stances. It is needless to develop for multiple platforms at one time. 
• Future enhancements – The Alexa Skills platform will introduce more complex functionalities as the technology matures to meet the growing expectations. Getting into this technology early and having the necessary Alexa Skills development can offer you a competitive edge and opportunity to learn without much consequence as time goes by. 
• Competitive Advantage – With voice assistance technology being relatively new, it poses an immense opportunity to beat or be on par with your competitors and to market your products and services with a compelling consumer experience. Thus, you can differentiate your brand in your industrial segment. 
• Market recognition – The best part is that the companies that are first to market will be recognized as innovators and may get extensive positive media attention.

Conclusion

Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, and other AI-enabled assistants will become a powerful force to be reckoned with in a voice-first world. Custom Alexa skills development companies can help you merge your sales and distribution channel, service center, and order fulfillment. Next to developing mobile applications, the current trend is revolving around branded skills for voice assistants.

We are a custom software development company in the USA, and we offer custom Alexa skills development services. To know more, get in touch with us now! Reach us at +1 408-400-3737 or drop your requirement to this e-mail id: contact@topsinfosolutions.com

Alexa helps you to customize voice skills and to manage Amazon Echo devices. Using Alexa Skill Kit (ASK) and conference APIs, you can enable it to configure your organization’s skills. There are plenty of Alexa skills that lack reviews as the users don’t seem to return to them. Thus you must understand Alexa the skill’s intent that you wish to develop.

We have brought together a few factors based on the collaborative experience we had with our clients while developing Alexa skills for their Business. It is a generic compilation as it is pertinent to remember that each Business and every use case varies.

Essential factors to consider before developing Alexa Skill

The intent of your action is crucial. It must be purposeful, regularly usable, and stand out.
Daily usage – check whether the Alexa skill can be put to use daily by the users. It can be a simple reminder to get started on a workout routine, medication time, or drink water. It can also be news feed updates or any knowledge enriching updations for them. To make it exciting and engaging, the intent could also be as simple as an excellent addition to a game.

• Timing Is Essential – develop skills that don’t take up much of the users’ time. Else, the users may lose attention and interest. Interaction must be prompt, and response time is essential for any Alexa skill development based on bidirectional execution of instructions.
• Provide Useful and Educational content– The majority of people follow content that gives a better feeling that the time was spent right. So, delivering useful or personalized content is the key. It can also be a catching up session of the information that they might have missed for the day.

Top Alexa skills for your Business

Amazon Alexa helps you accomplish tasks at a workplace by acting as a digital assistant. Using our voice to communicate with technology helps employees stay organized and focus on top priority things.

• To-do List and Appointment Scheduling -Making a to-do list and scheduling meetings and events are time-consuming tasks. It is essential, too, but employees face time deficit to perform other vital tasks. So, developing Alexa skills to make a to-do list and schedule meetings without any physical action saves a lot of time and effort. You can set notifications, and employees can instantly access and edit to-do items with a voice command. It can be done on the go with the Amazon Alexa app on iOS, Android, or on alexa.amazon.com.
• Manage Conferences – Conference management skill development enables users to link Google calendar directly to know the conference schedule time. It can also dial the call for you over a voice command automatically. Just say, “Alexa, start my meeting,” and it will commence the meeting. Needless to spend time digging for all the necessary information needed for the conference.
• E-mail Assistant – Sales and Marketing personnel, or anyone who is mostly on the go, would love to have an e-mail assistant Alexa skill. It helps manage their inbox, informs unread messages and new e-mails. Developing customized e-mail assistant skills can manage multiple e-mail providers. With your voice command, Alexa can read, reply, manage e-mails, and perform your entire mailing functions.
• Smart devices Management – Controlling equipment with voice command is the trend nowadays. No more toggling with several apps to handle each one of your smart gadgets. Developing an Alexa skill for managing home and office equipment lets you supervise and track them with voice commands. It could be your desktop, thermostats, lights, AC, etc.
• Expense Management – Analyze and control your finances with Alexa Skills for your Business. Utilize expense management skills from Alexa to pay bills, schedule payments, track finances, and control expenditure.
• Work Time Tracker – Keep track of your work time spent per-project basis with Alexa skill. Set customized tracker skills by telling her to begin and end time when you have completed your task. Although being a simple skill, it can support you to get things done swiftly and enhance productivity. Additionally, you can find out where hours had gone waste and can tweak your work.

Where is Alexa skills development heading to in the future?

Alexa Echo devices are advancing their usage from time to time. With the present COVID-19 crisis pressing on personal hygiene, hands-free digital personal assistants are the lifesavers. They respond to your questions, implement security functions, operate in-house appliances, and assist with your daily chores.

Alexa is missioned to be the best guiding companion for the visually challenged. It eases activities for senior members in your family who have arthritis, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson, or any sort of visually impaired disorder. They don’t even have to get up, see or feel it. Additionally, Alexa Echo can be used by elders to kids.

Final thoughts

No matter the size of Business, developing Alexa skills accordingly can help streamline your business operations and boost productivity. So it is best to keep all the points mentioned above in mind before any Alexa Skill development.

We, Tops Infosolutions, are the top software development company in the USA. Our experts can help you develop the AI behind Alexa to build the right custom Alexa Skills and deliver the best-personalized user experience. Reach us at +1 408-400-3737 or drop your requirement to this e-mail id: contact@topsinfosolutions.com

At workplaces, employees spend much of their time scheduling meetings, managing calendars, making a to-do list, researching for information, and much more. This is tedious and cumbersome and results in a waste of time and a lack of productivity. But, what if someone else does this task for you?

It will save much of the employee’s time and will be able to focus more on other tasks. Virtual digital assistant Amazon Alexa can help you do these tasks by acting as a digital assistant at the workplace.

It enables us to use our voice and communicate with technology so that employees can stay organized and focus on the things that matter the most. Alexa provides tools to manage Amazon Echo devices and enables configuring skills.

You can customize voice skills using Alexa Skill Kit (ASK) and conference APIs to make them a private skill for your organization. Whether you have a small or medium-sized business, getting Alexa skills developed can streamline your business operations and boosts workplace productivity.

Here are Some oF The Top Alexa Skills and Advantages For Your Business:

1. To-do List and Appointment Scheduling

Making a to-do list and scheduling meetings and events on the calendar consume much of the time and due to that employees are not able to focus on other important tasks. So, to enhance the efficiency of the employees, you can develop Alexa skills that make a to-do list, schedule meetings, etc without any physical activity.

For instance, when you say “add” to an item to-do list, Alexa would recognize your speech and convert it to a to-do or a scheduled event and notifies you about the added event to your list. This will help you to increase your productivity by staying organized anywhere you go.

With this skill, the employee can quickly access and edit to-do items on the go and can have access to a to-do-list within Amazon Alexa app on iOS, Android, or on alexa.amazon.com

2. Manage Conferences

Conference management plays a crucial role in managing business operations. By developing this skill, users can link directly to their Google calendar to know the conference call scheduled and it can dial the call for you automatically. It refrains you to use remote controls, looking up conference call information, and manually dialing numbers for the meetings.

You just need to say, “Alexa start my meeting” and Alexa will get you to start with the meeting. Alexa will dig in all the necessary information needed for the conference, dial the bridge number, meeting number, and participant code and then call your number to connect with you to the conference.

With this Alexa skill, you can even join a third-party conferencing service provider and schedule meetings based on the user’s calendar and resources available on the office premises.

3. E-mail Assistant

For sales and Marketing personnel, who are always on the go, developing e-mail assistant Alexa skills, is an easy way to help them manage their inbox. You can develop customized email assistant skills that can manage all the providers including Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail, etc by informing you how many unread and new e-mails are available in your inbox.

On behalf of you, Alexa will read, reply and manage emails just by voice command. You can even ask Alexa to read out priority emails, only starred emails, or only newsletters and Alexa will do it for you.  For quick replies, you can even set canned responses – and assistant skill will send them to the concerned person.

4. Smart Devises Management

Today, everyone wants to control their types of equipment with voice commands. Instead of toggling between multiple apps to manage your smart gadgets, why not ask Alexa to do the same for you?

Developing an Alexa skill developed for managing home and office devices enables you to monitor and track them with voice commands. You can manage your desktop, thermostats, door locks, AC, etc. just with your voice commands. You can pair Alexa with the smart office skill and ask to turn on/off lights, control music, and other audio, adjust the temperature of the AC, etc.

5. Expense Management

Control your finances efficiently with Alexa Skills. Businesses can utilize expense management skills to process, pay and keep track of finances. An Amazon Alexa skill can be developed that can be used to check the bills, schedule payments, keep track of expenses and income, analyze and control your spending, and much more.

6. Work Time Tracker

Do you wish to keep track of your time spent on the task and need a timer that can help you to do the same? You can customize the work time tracker skill where Alexa will record the time that you spent on a particular task. Just tell Alexa to track time and tell her to stop when you are done with your task.

This, being simple skill can help you to get things done faster, boosting productivity. Moreover, you can keep track of where you are wasting your hours so that you can tweak your work and can focus more on other tasks.

Develop custom Alexa Skills with our Alexa Skills Development experts. Virtual digital assistants and artificial intelligence are playing a key role in the enterprise to enhance agility in the business.

We possess the expertise to develop the AI behind Alexa in line with your business requirements and thus boost the productivity of your business. Talk to our experts on how TOPS Infosolutions can help turn your business into a ‘smart business’.