Tag: conversational ui

Amazon Launches Web Portal For Alexa Skills Discovery

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon is making it easier for Alexa users to discover new skills and managing existing ones via a new web portal named Alexa skills marketplace. Previously, Alexa users have to log into their Alexa app to find, enable, or disable specific Alexa skills. Each skill now has a dedicated URL, which allow brands and developers to drive users to their Alexa skills directly. Developers and brands can now also optimize their skill pages to improve organic discovery.

What Brands Should Do
In September, Amazon announced that the number of available Alexa skills has grown to over 3,000, which shows great interest from developers and brands as they race to conquer the era of voice-based brand-customer interactions. Early-adopting brands such as Hyundai, Patrón, and Capital One have created branded Alexa skills to reach customers via the digital assistant service.This new web portal can help more users discover and manage Alexa skills more easily while also giving brands a new channel to push their branded skills.

The Lab has extensive experience with building Alexa skills and helping brands navigate the new realities that conversational interfaces are set to bring. If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out and schedule a visit to the Lab. For additional information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, please check out the first section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: VentureBeat

American Express Creates Slack Bot For Buying Concert Tickets

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
American Express is making it easier for its cardholders to find and purchase concert tickets within popular workplace communication platform Slack. Working with creative agency B-Reel, AmEx created a Slack bot that can guide users through the process with event data from Ticketmaster and, once an order is confirmed, use their on-file AmEx credit card information to complete the purchase. The bot also allows users to split the bill simply by tagging other Slack team members in their answers. The company debuted the prototype at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival on Tuesday, with plans to roll it out for public testing within the coming months.

What Brands Should Do
Slack currently has over 4 million daily active users, which represents a sizeable professional audience segment that brands can reach via chatbots. Previously, Kayak showcased a slack bot prototype to help customers book plane tickets via natural-language messages. This AmEx bot serves as a good example for brands looking to develop their own bots as it provides customers with real utility value and offers a seamless user experience thanks to the payment integration.

The Lab has extensive knowledge about building chatbots. If you’re interested in reaching your audience on messaging apps and better serving them with a chatbot, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) for more information or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Co.Create

Twitter To Speed Up Customer Service By Offering Brands Chatbots

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitter continues to make its platform more brand-friendly as it launches a chatbot service in Direct Messages that brands can use to speed up their customer service. The new feature allows brands to partner with nearly a dozen third-party services to build automated message systems specific to each brand, such as Welcome Messages and Quick Replies, to generate timely responses to inquiries and prompts from customers. Brands such as Pizza Hut, Spotify, Tesco, and Airbnb are among the first to try out this new product.

What Brands Should Do
Twitter has been steadily adding customer service tools to its platform, and this introduction of chatbot services is a natural step for Twitter as it builds out its customer support tools to appeal to the growing needs of brands and their customers. A recent study by Twilio found that most consumers now prefer to use messaging to interact with businesses rather than calling. As Twitter continues to make its platform more brand-friendly with new messaging features, we expect to see more brands utilize the tools to provide better customer service.

To learn more about how brands can reach and engage with customers via conversational interfaces such as messaging apps, check out the first part of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek

Header image courtesy of Twitter Advertising

Amazon Extends Alexa To Fire Tablets, Adds Visual Information Cards

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon is extending its virtual assistant service Alexa to its tablet products, including the $49 Fire tablet and the two Fire HD models. With an over-the-air update, Fire tablet users can now long press the home button to activate Alexa, allowing them to make use of the over 3,000 “skills” that the voice-based personal assistant is currently capable of.

This update also adds a visual component to Alexa, as text-based information cards will now show up on the tablet screens to accompany Alexa’s answers for certain skills. Moreover, those who own a Fire tablet and an Echo device will be able to sync up Alexa across devices so that they can enjoy the typical hands-free experience of summoning Alexa while also receiving supporting visual information on their tablet.

What Brands Should Do
As Amazon continues to improve Alexa’s functionality and expand it to more devices, it is quickly establishing itself as a leader in the digital assistant market. The addition of information cards allows developers and brands to incorporate a visual component into their Alexa skills and enhance the user experience. For instance, this feature should be helpful for Alexa-assisted shopping as it can provide customers with product previews. Boosted by the addition of visuals, the type of conversation-based interactions that Alexa enables is poised to drastically change how consumers get information and interact with brands.

The Lab has extensive experience with building Alexa skills and helping brands navigate the new realities that conversational interfaces are set to bring. If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out and schedule a visit to the Lab. For additional information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, please check out the first section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: The Verge

Header image is a promotional image courtesy of Amazon

Bank Of America Is Building A Personal Finance Assistant

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Bank of America is reportedly working on a Siri-like digital financial adviser named Erica for its mobile apps that will help customers better manage their personal finances. With this AI-powered service, people will be able to communicate with Erica via text or voice 24/7 to get assistance with processing transactions. Erica will also monitor spending patterns and alert customers when they are about to go into overdraft, as well as offer advice on how to improve their credit score and budgeting. Bank of America is aiming to release Erica by the end of 2017.

What Brands Should Do
This is the latest example of how conversation-based assistant services may transform customer experiences in banking. In August, Singaporean bank DBS launched a chatbot to let customers handle basic banking tasks via text. What sets Erica apart from DBS Bank’s chatbot, however, is that the former appears to be more powerful in its capabilities, as it will be able to monitor banking and spending activities and use machine learning to offer timely, personalized financial advice.

As more brands embrace digital assistants and chatbots in order to better serve their customers, brands that wish to stay ahead of the curve should start working with developers to figure out how conversational interfaces may improve the customer experience. For additional information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, please check out the first section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Engadget

Facebook Adds PayPal Payments And Notifications To Messenger

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues to build out the ecommerce capability of its messaging platform as it adds support for PayPal. Select U.S. users now have the option to link their PayPal accounts to their Messenger accounts and use it to handle payments and receive notifications directly within the Messenger app.

Previously, Facebook Messenger only supported debit cards for in-app payments, making this PayPal integration the first digital payment solution added on Messenger. Speculation swirled earlier this year that it would integrate Apple Pay as a payment option, but nothing ever materialized. Last month, Messenger enabled chatbots to accept payments directly within chats.

What Brands Should Do
By adding PayPal support, Facebook gives customers a new checkout option and enhances the payment experience on Messenger, which continues to improve as an emerging channel for brands to sell directly to customers. Retailers such as Everlane and Zulily are using the app as an ecommerce platform to connect with customers in a casual, messaging-based context, and other brands have been using chatbots to reach their audiences on one of the world’s most popular apps.

For more information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on messaging apps and other conversational platforms, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016 and our latest Fast Forward analysis on Messenger chatbots. If you wish to develop a branded chatbot to connect with consumers on messaging apps, please reach out and schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: VentureBeat

eBay Dips Toe Into Conversational Commerce With Messenger Bot

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following the addition of a visual search engine to its site, eBay continues to modernize its customer experience as it launches personalized shopping assistant “ShopBot” into beta on Facebook Messenger. According to eBay, the chabot is powered by contextual understanding and predictive modeling based on eBay’s massive inventory. Users can text, talk, or send an image to let ShopBot know what they are looking for, and ShopBot will ask questions to narrow the shopping intent and make recommendations accordingly.

What Brands Should Do
With this launch, eBay joins the growing list of brands experimenting with chatbots to optimize customer experiences. The rise of conversational commerce points to changing consumer behavior on mobile and a shift in brand-customer interaction. A recent study found that most consumers now prefer to use messaging to interact with businesses rather than calling. Therefore, brands, especially retailers, should take note and develop a strategy for conversational commerce.

The Lab has extensive knowledge about building consumer-facing chatbots. If you’re interested in reaching your audience on messaging apps, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) for more information or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: eBay

 

Header image is a promotional image courtesy of eBay

Baidu Launches A Medical Chatbot That Acts As A Physician’s Assistant

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Baidu, typically referred to as China’s Google, launched a medical chatbot that aims to speed up the diagnosing process and help doctors collect patient information. The bot, named Melody, lives in the Baidu Doctor app, which launched in China in 2015 and aims to connect patients to local doctors for inquiries and booking appointments. Melody, only available in China right now, is powered by Baidu’s deep learning and natural language processing systems. It prompts users with generic questions, such as asking for the demographic info of the patient, what medications they are on, and how long a symptom has lasted, in order to gather sufficient information to pass to doctors for diagnosis.

What Brands Should Do
While Melody does not present any marketing opportunity for brands, it is still notable as a rare use case of chatbots in the healthcare field. This chatbot is also notable for its limited capability as Baidu stresses that Melody is not supposed to replace human doctors, but instead acts as a physician’s assistant and does prep work for them. This mirrors the Lab’s take on branded chatbots: they are great for handling basic customer service and other single-focus tasks such as gathering information and feedback. With more and more smartphone users opting to communicate via messaging apps, it is time for brands to consider developing chatbots in order to modernize their customer experience.

The Lab has extensive knowledge about building chatbots. If you’re interested in reaching your audience on messaging apps and better serving them with a chatbot, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) for more information or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: The Verge

 

A Stockholm Hotel Is Using Amazon’s Alexa As In-Suite Butlers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The Clarion Hotel Amaranten in Stockholm is the first in the world to incorporate Amazon’s voice-based, personal assistant Alexa into its suites. The hotel worked with Edge DNA to integrate hotel-specific functions into Alexa, which can help guests search for information, play music, or order a taxi. The hotel also plans to further integrate Alexa so that guests will soon be able to control the lights, lock the doors, or order room service simply by talking to Alexa.

What Brands Should Do
This is the latest example of how voice-based assistant services may transform customer experiences in hospitality. As Amazon continues to improve Alexa’s functionality and expand it to more devices to reach a bigger audience, brands that wish to stay ahead of the curve need to start working with developers to explore how incorporating conversational interfaces may help improve the customer experience.

The Lab has extensive experience with building Alexa skills and helping brands navigate the new realities that conversational interfaces are set to bring. If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out and schedule a visit to the Lab. For additional information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, please check out the first section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Business Insider

Fast Forward: Everything From Google’s Hardware Event That Brands Need To Know

Posted on by Lab Team

Your guide to tech-driven changes in the media landscape by IPG Media Lab. A fast read for you and a forward for your clients and team.

Editor’s note: This is a delayed posting of the Lab’s hot take on the latest tech events. For a more timely delivery, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to join our Fast Forward mailing list.

The highlights:

• Updated Google Assistant service brings AI-powered convenience to a wide-range of Android devices
• Google readies push into smart home space as it sets release date and pricing for its Echo competitor
• Daydream View VR headset looks to bring immersive media to more Android users

What Google Announced

Google unveiled a series of new hardware products at its much-anticipated “Made by Google” event on Tuesday in San Francisco. The Verge has great coverage of all the product announcements that Google made today. The announcements that are particularly relevant to brands and marketers include:

• Google debuted the Pixel phone with built-in Google Assistant, Google’s answer to Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, capable of both voice-based and text-based conversational interactions.
• Google announced the release date and pricing for Google Home, a smart speaker powered by Google Assistant, that it introduced at this year’s Google I/O event.
• Google introduced its first VR headset, the Daydream View, which is designed to work seamlessly with Pixel phones and will come with a handheld motion-sensing controller.
• Google launched a developer platform for creating “Actions” for Google Assistant for both smart home tasks and conversational apps.
• Google also announced that an SDK for embedding Google Assistant into third-party devices is in the works.

What Brands Need To Do

Build Google Assistant Actions To Reach Android Users
Kicking off the presentation, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage to introduce updates to Google Assistant, an evolution of Google’s predictive search service Google Now. Looking ahead, he commented, we are be moving from “mobile-first” to “AI-first,” a future where AI-powered digital assistants will handle most tasks and interactions across devices and platforms. For brands, this fundamental shift will have significant implications to brand-customer interactions across all digital touchpoints.

For now, however, it means brands need to finetune their digital strategies to add digital assistant services into the fold. The Google Assistant integration that was demoed today shows that Google is going to bring the more transactional aspects that are now completed in apps into Assistant as much as possible. It’s a great time to think about how your brand can help consumers in this way, even if it’s complementary to your typical goods or service, rather than a core offering. For example, auto brands could help consumers understand car maintenance best practices in addition to making sure that information about their latest models, dealership locations, and customer service phone numbers are all correctly indexed by Google.

Brands should also take advantage of Actions to integrate their services into Google Assistant. Starting in December, brands can work with developers to build Google Assistant Actions to reach Android users across many devices and contexts. For instance, an entertainment brand may consider building an Action that enables Google Assistant to surface movie trivia and trailers when Assistant users ask for it. Details on how this developer platform is scarce at the moment, so stay tuned to find out more.

Develop A Brand Voice For Smart Home
The smart home market is set to heat up again with the impending arrival of Google Home. Amazon has been conquering the market with its Echo lineup, pushing its digital assistant service Alexa into many a living room. Compared to Alexa, Google Assitant has the advantage of Google’s vast Knowledge Graph it accumulates from its search service, which allows it to answer a wide-range of questions with ease. Competitively priced at $129, Google Home may just have what it takes to convince customers to pick up a smart speaker come the holiday shopping season.

Although smart home devices have so far remained ad-free environments, that doesn’t mean brands can’t leverage branded content and functions, especially Alexa Skills for Amazon Echo devices and Google Assistant Actions for Google Home, to reach customers at home. As voice-based smart home devices continue to proliferate, brands will need to figure out a brand voice that is authentic to the brand image and appealing to the target audience. For example, a mass fashion brand should make sure their brand messaging appears approachable and universal, whereas a niche fashion brand may consider making theirs a bit quirky and tailored.

The home environment presents new contexts and challenges that brands will need to navigate mindfully. For example, a healthcare brand is able to reach customers at home with audio content such as wellness tips or instructions for taking medications, but it needs to be cautious in dealing with personal medical information given the social nature of such devices.

Use VR To Craft Engaging Brand Narratives
While it is too early to tell if Google’s Daydream will make a dent in the consumer VR market, it signals Google’s ambition in pushing affordable, mobile-powered VR experiences into the hands of more Android users. As more and more brand marketers rush into VR to capitalize on the booming popularity of the emerging medium, some fail to come up with a brand narrative that truly utilizes the immersive and interactive advantages that VR offers. And instead of coming up with a sustainable, long-term VR strategy, many brands dove into the medium with a one-off piece of VR content, distributed it across all channels regardless of behavioral differences.

To avoid this kind of rather short-sighted approach, brands need to work closely with content creators to develop VR content that truly enhances brand messaging and contributes to the campaign objectives. For example, American Family Insurance recently struck a content development deal with AOL, which allows the insurer to tap into creative resources at AOL’s Partner Studio and HuffPost RYOT to develop a three-part, branded VR series as well as a number of 360-degree video ads that will appear across AOL’s ad network in tandem.

How We Can Help

Please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) if you would like more detail or want to schedule a visit to the Lab to discuss how your brand may benefit from integrating with Google Assistant to surface brand messaging and developing branded immersive content to engage consumers.

For previous editions of Fast Forward, please visit ipglab.com. Please reply with any constructive criticism or feedback. We want these to be as useful as possible for you and your clients, and your input will help us immensely.