Tag: conversational ui

Now You Can Ask Alexa To Send You A Plumber Thanks To HomeAdvisor

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Home service-booking site HomeAdvisor has launched an Alexa skill to allow Echo users to book a home service professional without lifting a finger. Once a homeowner activates the skill, Alexa will ask for the user’s zip code and phone number. Then HomeAdvisor will match the homeowner up with a home service professional in the local area to give the homeowner a call to confirm a booking. Users can also use the skill to find help for their home improvement or even landscaping projects.

What Brands Need To Do
It is interesting to see that HomeAdvisor beat Amazon to the punch with this Alexa skill, considering the ecommerce giant has launched their own online home service marketplace Home Services last year, which Amazon has yet to integrate with Alexa. As evidenced by Alexa’s dominance at this year’s CES, Amazon’s voice assistant has an early lead in becoming the interface of many a voice-activated home device, making it a valuable platform for brands seeking to reach consumers at home. This HomeAdvisor is but one of the latest addition to Alexa’s growing capabilities, which is ushering in a new type of audio-based discovery and engagement that brands need to adapt to.

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 with Drizly for Miller Lite 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: GeekWire

You Can Now Remote Control Your Hyundai Via Google Assistant

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
If you happen to be both a Hyundai owner and a Google Home user, now your car is ready for voice command. The South Korean carmaker announced on Thursday that it has officially enabled the Google Assistant integration with its BlueLink connected car system, as promised at this year’s CES. This update allows owners of recent Hyundai models to remotely control several aspects of their vehicles. For example, users can ask Google Assistant to start their vehicles, set climate control, send directions to the on-board navigation, or unlock/lock the vehicle among other functions.

What Brands Need To Do
This is not the first time Hyundai has integrated its connected car system with a voice assistant. In November 2016, the company extended its BlueLink app to support voice command via Amazon’s Alexa. Now with this Google Assistant integration, Hyundai is further committing to make its vehicles useful with voice-activated conversational interfaces, which opens up new possibilities for them to connect with customers at home. As automakers experiment with smart home device connectivity to expand the reach of their services, other brands should take note and start exploring this space to reach customers beyond mobile as well.

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 with Drizly for Miller Lite 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: 9to5 Google

Burger King’s New TV Ad Intentionally Triggers Google Home To Tell You More

Posted on by Lab Team

Google has yet to officially roll out ad products on Google Home, but that does not stop Burger King to hack the way the voice-activated smart speaker works to co-opt it into its latest marketing campaign. The fast food chain released a new TV spot that features someone in a Burger King uniform ceremonially uttering, “OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?” For any user with a Google Home near their TV, this will trigger Google Assistant to begin reading the Wikipedia entry for the Whopper. Google is reportedly not involved in the ad’s creation.

While this ad is a clever way to grab people’s attention, it is also exploiting the personal assistants to deliver an unwarranted marketing message via a personal home device. Some may find it goofy and write it off as a joke, while others would find it invasive and disruptive.

Ethics aside, this unusual ad highlights not only the increased presence of voice-activated devices at home, but also the weakness of the voice assistants not being able to differentiate the voices of the users. (Google is reportedly working on multi-user support for Home, which should help alleviate this issue.) It would be best for brands to stay clear of such gimmicks and take the growth of voice-activated smart devices seriously by developing branded audio experience to serve customers.

 

Source: The Verge

Facebook Rolls Out M Assistant To All Messenger Users

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook’s AI-powered chat assistant M is finally ready to meet the public, just in time for its upcoming annual F8 developer conference. M will analyze your messages in the Facebook Messenger app to understand your intent and, when applicable, will pop up into chats to make suggestions or complete tasks on your behalf, such as calling an Uber or setting a reminder, based on the context of the conversations. Facebook has started rolling out M to iOS and Android users in the US, with a broader expansion around the globe in the coming months. Facebook first announced the AI assistant service in September 2015 but only started testing it in a limited capacity since last December.

What Brands Need To Do
The arrival of M on Messenger marks an important milestone in Facebook’s development of a conversational assistant service that can help it stay in competition with rivals such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri.  Having a contextually aware smart assistant on standby would certainly bares huge potential in making Facebook’s messaging apps more brand-friendly, but for now, Facebook is taking a decidedly neutral approach to designing M with little room for brand integrations as of now. Nevertheless, the deployment of M still marks Facebook’s determination of building Messenger as a platform that brands of all types could benefit greatly from. And it is time to start expanding your customer service from phone call-based to include text-based messaging, reaching consumers on the platforms they already use.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive knowledge about reaching consumers on mobile messaging apps and building branded chatbots. The new NiroBot we build in collaboration with Ansible for Kia delivers comprehensive product information about the all-new Niro model via friendly chats. We’ve also built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue to 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: The Verge

Alexa Users Can Now Activate New Skills Just By Asking

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon is making it even easier for Alexa users to discover and activate new skills, which is Amazon’s way of calling voice-only app for its voice assistant made by third-party developers. Amazon has added a functionality to catch failed launch intents of non-enabled skills and allow users to invoke skills that haven’t been enabled by saying valid invocation utterances. This means Alexa-users will no longer need to pre-enable skills before using them. 

Previously, users have to enable a skill via the Alexa app on their mobile devices before they can use it on Alexa. Those who failed to do will be greeted with an error message and a prompt designed to teach the customer how to enable the skill.

This addition also offers a certain level of flexibility by allowing utterances similar to the rigid invocation pattern to result in skill enablement. For example, users can say either “Open up the Jeopardy game,” “Start up Jeopardy,” or “Launch the Jeopardy skill,” all of which will launch the Jeopardy skill for them even if it has not been enabled before.

What Brands Need To Do
This is a small yet significant update for the Alexa Voice Service, which allows third-party skills to be invoked without prior enablement. This not only makes for a smoother user experience but also removes a lot of the frictions in getting Alexa users to try out the skills made by brands. Now, marketing campaigns can feature skill utterances that work for customers whether or not they’ve enabled a skill allowing for easier discovery and repeated use.

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.

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 for Miller Lite 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 Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: CNET

Alexa Developers Can Now Customize Skills Based On User Locations

Posted on by Lab Team

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

Mode.ai’s Messenger Bot Can Suggest Similar-Looking Fashion Items That You Can Buy

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Friday, retail recommendation engine and chatbot maker Mode.ai launches a bot on Facebook Messenger that can find similar-looking fashion apparel items for users based on photos they submit. Mode.ai trained the bot’s AI engine with millions of pictures of products from online retailers, and if you like what it suggests, the bot also lets you shop directly from a number of fashion retailers like Levi’s, Louis Vuitton, Ann Taylor, as well as Amazon. In addition to its own bot, Mode.ai plans to offer computer vision services to several retailers and fashion publishers to be announced during F8, the upcoming annual conference for Facebook developers.

What Brands Need To Do
This new Mode.ai bot is a good example of how product discovery may work in the near future where AI-powered smart assistants are able to use the camera of your mobile devices to see what you are seeing. The surging prominence of visual input is set to bring a new set of opportunities and challenges that brands will need to learn to navigate in order to adapt to the shifting consumer behaviors. As computer vision technology continues to mature, it opens up new use cases for brands to create new user experiences supercharged by cognitive ecommerce engines like Mode.ai.

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 NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia 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

 

Samsung’s Bixby Assistant Comes With A Cool Image Search Feature

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Samsung officially unveiled its digital assistant service Bixby on Wednesday with the launch of the Galaxy S8 flagship handsets at its Unpacked 2017 event (check out this VentureBeat article on all Samsung’s announcements today). Positioned as the Siri for Samsung phones, Bixby is designed to facilitate hands-free interactions in Samsung apps via voice command. At launch, Bixby only supports a handful of apps, including Samsung’s native services, but Samsung plans to release an SDK soon for developers to integrate Bixby into their apps.

That said, Bixby does come with a cool feature that few other digital assistants in market is capable of – the ability to recognize objects via the phone’s camera and surface similar images via search. When users are taking a picture with a new Galaxy S8 phone, they can tap on a small button on the camera app to evoke Bixby’s visual search feature, which leverages image recognition technology developed by Pinterest to discern the physical objects in sight and presents either similar images of the objects or information about those objects found via search. Samsung is also planning to add a shopping angle to this feature, allowing Bixby to present search results of the objects among online retail sites. This feature essentially creates a mobile-based augmented reality experience where users can point their camera at certain things to learn more about them.

What Brands Need To Do
As digital assistant get smarter, they become a gateway to introduce mainstream consumers to some advanced AI-powered solutions such as visual search and computer vision. Earlier this year, Pinterest launched a similar computer vision feature that allows users to use their phone to identify objects and search for similar images. It will also present promoted Pins in the results if the object matches with what users are looking for.

This visual search feature of Bixby enables Samsung users to quickly access digital information about physical objects in front of them via an AR-like experience, which unlocks a new way for brand marketers to serve mobile customers with tailored messages. Imagine pointing your phone’s camera at a restaurant sign and immediately find out its Yelp rating, business hours, and signature dishes. Or pointing your camera at a snack bar and let Bixby tell you about its nutrition facts and where you can buy more of it. The possibilities to bridge the physical and the digital world are endless. Therefore, brand seeking to stay ahead of the innovational curve will need to pay attention to the development of artificial intelligence and experiment with the new marketing solutions it enables.

 

Source: The Verge

Header image courtesy of Samsung

 

Apple Makes Siri More Competent With Latest iOS Update

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Apple upgraded Siri with some noteworthy new features in its latest iOS update, making it more competitive with rival digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant that are quickly gaining grounds thanks to their comprehensive features and growing popularity of smart speakers. With Apple’s full rollout of its iOS 10.3 update on Tuesday, Siri now supports a wider range of app actions, including paying and checking bills via payment apps, booking rides from ride-hailing apps, checking car fuel, turning on connected lights, and several features for controlling connected devices.

What Brands Need To Do
We are merely at the beginning of a long battle where major tech companies race against each other to push their own digital assistant service as the default choice for customers so as to secure the user base, which will become particularly crucial once we move past the mobile era and enter the IoT era where most of our digital interactions happen on screenless connected devices that rely on voice-based conversational interfaces.

For brands, the new developments in voice-based assistants herald an impending sea change in customer-brand interactions, which brands will have to start preparing for today by figuring out a conversational strategy and find a way to integrate their brands into conversational platforms. For example, last week, Marriott reportedly started testing both Siri and Alexa to figure out which digital assistant is more competent to control the smart devices in its hotel rooms. Whichever one of two the hotel chain eventually decides on, the real winner will be the Marriott customers that get enjoy a modernized hotel experience.

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 with Drizly for Miller Lite 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 Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: GeoMarketing

Facebook Chatbot Offers Discounts On Prom Tuxedo Rentals Based On Grades

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The Black Tux, a startup specializing in online tuxedo and suit rentals, has created a chatbot that hands out discounts based on school grades. Available on Facebook Messenger, the Suit Up Bot “uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) via the Tesseract OCR engine” to scan the report cards that customers uploaded and authenticate them for potential discounts. (In our test, the bot couldn’t recognize the random report card we found online but proceeded to offer up a code for $20 off at The Black Tux’s website.)

What Brands Need To Do
This new chatbot is a fun example of designing ecommerce chatbots. Inspired by the nostalgia of receiving rewards for good grades, the discount scheme fits well with the brand’s young adults-centric customer demo. As consumers continue to embrace messaging apps and chatbot services, brands need to consider developing useful bots with distinct features and personalities to reach customers on the popular messaging apps they’re already using.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building chatbots to reach consumers on messaging interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia 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 Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

Source: US Weekly

Header image courtesy of The Black Tux