Tag: conversational ui

Google Assistant Can Now Tell You When Your Food Will Expire

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Over the past week, Google Assistant gained about a dozen new actions (voice-only apps for Google Assistant, akin to skills for Alexa and Cortana), enabling new features and functions for Google Home and Pixel phones. One standout among this batch is one created by Chefling, a fridge-monitoring app. By enabling this action, users can share their grocery list with Chefling to allow its Google Home action to tell you when food in your fridge is likely to expire or suggest recipes based on ingredients in your kitchen.

What Brands Need To Do
Normally, Google Home users can ask Google Assistant to add grocery items to a Google Keep shopping list, but Chefling expands that use case to cover the post-grocery shopping activities. And Google Home’s voice-based interface makes it a perfect companion in the kitchen, where hands-free interactions are often preferred. When creating voice-based apps for voice-based smart devices, brands need to think about the extra value they can offer to enhance the user experience and establish a touchpoint with customers that are quickly embracing voice-activated digital assistant services.

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: VentureBeat

Header image is a promotional image for Google Home 

What Apple’s Acquisition Of Workflow Means For Future Conversational Platforms

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Apple announced on Thursday that it has acquired Workflow, an iOS automation app that lets you sync up apps to create quick shortcuts and automated actions, such as uploading the pictures you posted on Instagram to your Dropbox, or sending an automated message to someone when you crossed something off your to-do list. Apple is not shutting down the app for now, and is instead making it free to download. But it seems safe to assume that sooner or later Apple will be integrating Workflow’s cloud-based app automation capabilities into IOS, therefore opening up a lot of new possibilities for users to set up customized automation integrated with the core iOS features such as Siri and screenshot.

What Brands Need To Do
Beyond improving the accessibility and user experience of iOS devices, this acquisition also hints at what the future of Apple’s strategy for Siri and home automation might be. By adding Siri support, Apple could vastly expand Siri’s capabilities and make it easier for users to customize their experiences. As major tech players rush to build out AI-powered, voice-enabled platforms, as Amazon is doing with Alexa, Google with Google Assistant, and Microsoft with Cortana, Workflow will give Apple a much-needed boost in creating a user-friendly entryway for customizable voice experiences.

For brands, this means two things. One, there are opportunities in creating automation recipes that help integrate your branded app or web-based services into the iOS ecosystem so as to expand your reach and provide users with extra value. In addition, brands also need to prepare for the rise of conversational interfaces and figure out an authentic brand voice to reach customers.

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: The Next Web

 

Amazon Extends Alexa Voice Shopping To Include Prime Now Deliveries

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon Prime members can ask Alexa to get their groceries delivered within hours, thanks to the latest expansion of the voice assistant’s shopping capabilities. By integrating Prime Now programs into Alexa, Amazon is pushing the envelope on Alexa’s ecommerce capabilities and make it more deeply ingrained in Prime members’ daily lives. Beyond grocery products, Alexa can also order fast deliveries for smaller items such as video games from local stores. Some cities, such as Seattle, Columbus, and Cincinnati, will even get booze delivery via Alexa.

What Brands Need To Do
As Amazon continues to improve Alexa’s capabilities and integrate it with existing services, users will likely get more comfortable with voice shopping, thus presenting a new dilemma for brands in reaching customers via a voice-based conversational interface like Alexa. Short of partnering with Amazon to put your products atop the voice search results, which Amazon has yet to start doing, a good solution is for brands to develop their own Alexa skills. For example, beer giant Anheuser-Busch recently launched an Alexa skill that guides users through various workout routines designed to burn off the calories of a beer, which is a cool way to establish a brand presence on Alexa devices while providing extra value to customers.

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 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: VentureBeat

 

Amazon Brings Alexa To iOS Via Main App Integration

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon has integrated Alexa into the iOS version of its main app, allowing iPhone and iPad users to interact with the popular voice assistant right on their mobile devices. IOS users can tap a microphone icon in the Amazon app to use Alexa to shop on Amazon.com by voice, play music and audiobooks, asking Alexa questions, checking the news, and accessing the 10,000 and counting Alexa skills, including the one we made for getting Miller Lite delivered to your door using Drizzly.

The move by Amazon makes Alexa available for a much wider audience who might not have Amazon Echo or Fire devices, expanding the reach and introduce more users to its ecosystem of Alexa-powered services and hardware products.This would help Amazon further conquer the digital assistant market and, in turn, give Amazon more conversational data to improve Alexa.

What Brands Need To Do
For brands, the expanded reach should make Alexa a more attractive platform to develop voice-based conversational experiences for. Earlier this week, Amazon announced it is applying promotional credits for developers that use Amazon Web Services for hosting Alexa skills, making it free for brands to build and host their Alexa skills.

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 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: Ars Technica
Header image is a promotional image courtesy of Amazon

Google Home Tests Audio Ads With A Partner Message For Beauty And The Beast

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Starting on Thursday, some Google Home users started receiving a short message informing them of the upcoming release of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast live-action remake when they ask for a summary of their day ahead. The message is delivered via the regular Google Assistant voice, so it blends in seamlessly with the other information typically included in the “My Day” summary such as weather, commute, calendar, reminders, and news. Some Android users are reportedly also getting the ad through Google Assistant on mobile.

The message does not appear to be targeted based search history or movie interests, and some users have expressed their dismay at the random insertion of this message into the “My Day” summaries. Google released a statement denying that this is an ad, claiming instead “the beauty in the Assistant is that it invites our partners to be our guest and share their tales,” which seems to categorize this message as a sponsor message. Whether Disney paid for this Google Assistant integration is still unclear.

What Brands Need To Do
As voice-activated digital assistant services start to take off and reach more and more customer, figuring out how to monetize them with ad products seems like the natural next step for a company like Google, whose lion’s share of company revenue comes from advertising. So, it makes perfect sense that Google has started testing this type of audio ads on its Assistant service. Unfortunately, Google failed to consider how intrusive an unprompted brand message would feel to customers who don’t find the message relevant to their interests, which sparked a minor online backlash among users. Down the road, Google will certainly have to start fine-tuning the targeting of such messages if they want this type of audio ads to work. For now, chatbots and branded voice skills are still the best bets for brands to reach customers via conversational interfaces.

 

Source: The Verge

GrubHub Launches Alexa Skill For Quick Food Reordering

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Online food delivery service GrubHub has created an Amazon Alexa skill to allow users to quickly reorder a recent meal. After activating the skill, users can get food delivered simply by asking Alexa to “open Grubhub” or “tell Grubhub I’m hungry,” before choosing between their three most recent GrubHub orders for delivery. Once confirmed, Alexa will also tell users how long they will have to wait before the food shows up.

What Brands Need To Do
This is not the first food delivery skill that Alexa has added to its fast-growing list of capabilities. Both Pizza Hut and Starbucks have created their own Alexa skills for voice ordering. As tech giants such as Google and Amazon continue to make strong pushes for their conversational products, more and more mainstream consumers will soon become reachable via those emerging voice-based devices. Therefore, brands will need to explore opportunities in building advanced applications for these emerging platforms with highly engaging user experiences and conversational interactions.

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: The Verge

 

Microsoft Launches Teams With Bot Integration To Take On Slack

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Microsoft has officially launched Teams to take on other enterprise chat apps such as Slack and Hipchat. The app is now available on iOS and Android smartphones and also downloadable for desktop devices running Windows and Mac. At launch, Microsoft Teams comes with about a dozen chatbots, most of which are also available on Slack.

Among the usual suspects, there is the Polly bot for conducting a quick poll among coworkers, the Statsbot for pulling data and reports from sources like Google Analytics and Salesforce, a Zenefits bot for managing vacation days, and a Kayak bot for checking flight information, all without leaving Teams. Microsoft says around 150 integrations with software and service are planned and will be added to Teams over the rest of the year.

What Brands Need To Do
The rise of workplace chat apps, influenced by the mass adoption of messaging apps as the primary communication channel on mobile, is quickly changing the way people communicate at work or in other professional contexts. They also offer brands a valuable inroad to reach customers at work and provide value. As they continue to overtake email as the primary communication tool at work and blur the line between private and professional communications, it is important that brands take the initiative to come up with a chatbot strategy to more effectively reach their customers via conversational interactions.

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

 

Source: VentureBeat

Header image courtesy of Microsoft Team’s website

ABC Partners HuffPost To Explore Audio Ads On Amazon Echo And Google Home

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
ABC is teaming up with The Huffington Post to explore audio ads delivered via the voice=based interfaces of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Aiming to promote the launch of the upcoming season of “American Crime,” the Disney-owned network will work with HuffPost to integrate content into the publisher’s existing Daily Flash Briefing on Amazon Alexa and Weekly News Quiz on Google Home throughout March.

What Brands Need To Do
This partnership marks one of the first advertiser integrations into an existing conversational skill. By plugging American Crime within HuffPost’s news briefing skills, ABC devices a winning strategy to reach an informed and socially invested audience demo via Google Home and Amazon Echo devices. As Amazon and Google begin to build an ad model on their virtual assistant services, it is important that marketers start to develop a conversational strategy and find the right partners to deliver their brand messages.

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: AdAge

Capital One Launches ‘Eno’ SMS Chatbot For Basic Banking Tasks

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Friday, Capital One launched “Eno,” a text message-based chatbot for handling basic banking tasks such as checking account balances, managing credit card payments, and reviewing recent purchases and payment history. The bot is now available to a limited number of customers, with further roll-out planned for the coming months. According to Capital One, “Eno” is the first natural language SMS chatbot created by a U.S. bank. Last summer, Singaporean bank DBS launched a chatbot to let customers handle basic banking tasks via text.

What Brands Need To Do
This is not the first time Capital One has experimented with conversational interfaces. Previously, the McLean, Virginia-based bank announced an integration of its banking app with Alexa to allow customers to handle their banking needs via voice command. 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 figure out their brand voice and incorporate conversational tools into their services to provide a better customer 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 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: 9to5 Mac

 

Soylent Creates Conversational Virtual Assistant For Its Online Shop

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Meal-in-a-bottle substitute maker Soylent has created a virtual assistant named Trish for its online shop to guide customers through the purchase process. Instead of using natural language input, Trish offers a menu of topics and answers that customers can click through to learn more about Soylent and its different product flavors. Once they select a flavor they like, Trish will prompt customers with a question of how many bottles they’d like to purchase and redirect them to the shopping cart for checkout.

What Brands Need To Do
Despite being a fairly low-tech version of a chatbot, Soylent’s new virtual shop keeper adds a conversational touch to the process of product discovery and site navigation of its online store. The addition of this conversational layer fosters a kind of user-friendliness that separates the customer experience from other online shopping experiences, where customers are bombarded with tons of options to choose from and left to their own devices. More brands, especially those that sells to customers directly online, need to evaluate their online customer experience and consider adopting conversational interfaces to guide customers with a simpler, more intuitive 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 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: Soylent