Category Archives: Alexa

Alexa can you fill in this form?

Turning web forms into Alexa skills

Turning web forms into Alexa skills

We all have websites and within those websites alongside educating customers, informing them of new products and services, explaining our company ethos and other matters there are web forms.

These web forms are full of utility and often drive a transaction or business process. Quite often the success of your website is to get people to fill in a particular form. UX and UI designers think about the different personas visiting your website and provide different user journeys to fulfil website goals. Indeed, Google analytics allows you to set up goals for the submittal of a form. Following this, based on your average order values and conversion rates you can tell what a goal is worth.

If the output your driving is for a user a customer to fill in a form either to enquire for customer support, get a quote or perhaps even to purchase order the less friction you can create on the journey the better.

In instances where using the voice is quicker, simpler and easier than using a traditional website or mobile interface then a voice first approach should be considered. Conversational interfaces for interacting with technology are not to substitute existing legacy systems but to complement them.

With the rise of smart speakers, voice assistance enabled on mobile phones and people’s behaviours moving towards sending voice notes over text messages there are big opportunities for you and your customers interacting via Alexa and Google assistant. If you haven’t already tried it and you’re an iPhone user setting up a calendar appointment or reminder using Siri is far quicker than manually touching your screen on your mobile phone to make this happen. This is because we can talk 4 times faster than we can type.

A use case of this in action is Virgin Trains. To book a train ticket on the traditional website took an average user seven minutes. When Virgin Trains launch the Alexa skill for customers train ticket booking times reduced to 2 minutes. Clearly, for the customer journey this is for faster quicker and simpler. Furthermore once Virgin Trains let the history of what the customer wanted for example the typical commute the user could simply asked for the last train ticket which would speed up the purchasing cycle yet again.

Recently, we launched a home valuation Alexa skill for Hunters. Whilst want we did may seem rather innovative and was a UK first in essence we ran a number of workshops with our customer to establish which Alexa skill would offer the greatest ROI and solve the biggest problem.

The consensus was to convert the popular web form for home valuation on the Hunters.com website to an Alexa Skill. Since launching the Skill the Hunters franchise network have given positive feedback and new sources of leads are generated for agents.

Your website will have web forms embedded within it. These will range from customer service and support, to general enquires and product reviews. You can take your existing proven web form interfaces to the smart speaker and voice assistants ecosystem.

Finally, because we live in the now economy and everyone is wanting to save time, money and increase convience voice interfaces will win out on the long term. Voice only interfaces might be low for e-commerce transactions but the addition of screens for multimodal experiences is changing this. Soon people will be browsing the web on their Smart TV with their voice and making purchases. Google Home Hubs and Amazon Echo Shows have screens allowing you to see and hear responses when interacting with smartspeakers.

To learn more visit:

https://www.webanywhere.co.uk/alexa-skills-development

Voice Summit 2018, Home House, London

Sean with Chris Jenkins and Darren Paskell of Thomas Pocklington Trust

Sean with Chris Jenkins and Darren Paskell of Thomas Pocklington Trust

Our first Voice Summit was held at Home House London. The history of Home House is fitting because Anthony Blunt a former Russian spy lived there between 1947 to 1974. Blunt was given immunity from prosecution in return for a full confession. After extensive restoration work Home House became a private members club in 1996.

Home House was a fitting venue for Voice Summit. Just as Anthony Blunt listened into conversations Amazon Alexa and Google Home are listening and waiting for their wake word. The issue of privacy was mentioned at Voice Summit but the majority of the speakers stated that this would become less of an issue when the massive gains in conveniences are realised. After all it’s a lot quicker to ask Alexa to pour you a coffee, play the news and heat the car than it is to do this manually.

Charles Cadbury Founder of Say it Now

Charles Cadbury Founder of Say it Now

Charles Cadbury the CEO of Say It Now demonstrated how he and his team had created a chat bot for SEAT for booking a test drive. Instead of the traditional web form or telephone booking appointment Charles took the audience through a series of questions with an Alexa Skill resulting in a SEAT car being delivered to a person’s home for a test drive.

In the telecoms panel including Dean Elwood, Dean Bubley and Chris Lewis, virtual assistants for managing unwanted calls was discussed. Perhaps for unknown numbers a virtual assistant could ask an inbound caller qualifying questions to determine whether the line should be connected. Another idea was when you are on a call with another person the ability in the call to talk to a voice assistant for help. For example on a call asking Siri in the call what is 1 dollar in pounds and getting the answer. The consensus from the telecom experts was that large telecoms providers have been slow to market with VoiceFirst products and services and need to catch up.

Home House London Voice Summit 2018

Home House London Voice Summit 2018

John Campbell, Head of SEO at We are Roast demonstrated there are still plenty of opportunities for Alexa Skills and Google Actions to drive leads and enquiries to your business or brand. The reality is voice technology is still in its infancy and every time you ask Alexa or OK Google a question it doesn’t know there is an opportunity to create a skill or action to service that need. Indeed voice search is predicted to be 50% of all internet searches by 2020. A traditional web search brings back many results whereas with voice there is only one result and this is position zero. Adopting a voice search SEO strategy can therefore get you to the top of Google and Amazon search results leading to lower customer acquisition costs.

James Poulter rounded off the day explaining there has never been a more interesting time to be in the workplace. You now have four generations at work all with different social norms and ways of working. This is a real challenge for managers and leaders to get it right as they think about culture in their organisations. Ironically a voice first approach to internal communications can be good for both the silver surfers and the millennials!

In a week where Google launched it’s Google Home Hub and Amazon it’s Echo Show 2 plus a range of devices such as the Echo Auto for enabling Alexa in your car, microphones are going to be everywhere. What remains to be seen is who will control the mic? Will it be Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant or perhaps even Samsung’s Bixby. Will we make our car purchasing decisions for example on the type of voice assistants built in? And finally will voice assistants talk to each other so we have fridges talking to toasters?

When a task is more natural, quicker and simpler with the voice, then a VoiceFirst approach should be adopted. This doesn’t mean a voice only approach as screens starts to become more prevalent in smart speakers and multi modal experiences become more commonplace. What is clear is that voice is here to stay and removing the friction of the keyboard or indeed the touch screen can lead to a more delightful experience for your customers. All of this leads to competitive advantage which will help you on your digital transformation journey.