What Happened
The location API for Alexa skills has officially come out of beta, Amazon announced in a company blog post. This API enables developers to access user locations and use that information to customize the conversational experiences they make, such as food delivery or finding the nearest drugstore. Previously, companies like AccuWeather and Just Eat have been testing this API. It is worth noting that this API is not a location tracker like GPS, but rather allows developers to access the address of the device owner according to their Amazon profile.
In addition, Amazon also launched a new metrics dashboard, which lets Alexa developers track things like unique customers, sessions, utterances and intents so that they can track the performance of their skills in one place.
What Brands Need To Do
As Amazon continues to build out Alexa’s capabilities and improve its measurement tools, brands will have an easier time to design their conversational brand experiences and track their performances in one place. Opening access to user addresses removes friction for delivery-oriented services and allows developers to deliver a more localized user experience. According to a report from analytics firm VoiceLabs, about 33 million voice-first devices will be in circulation by the end of 2017. Therefore, It is up to brands to start working with developers to figure out their brand voice and incorporate conversational tools into their marketing efforts. For more on this, check out the Advanced Interfaces section in our brand new Outlook 2017 trend report.
How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building Alexa Skills and chatbots to reach consumers on conversational interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The “Miller Time” Alexa Skill we developed is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational customer experience, supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data.
If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Barrett ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.
Source: VentureBeat
