Blog : amazon

Getting to the heart of modern romance with Amazon’s Alexa
Fiona Watson

Getting to the heart of modern romance with Amazon’s Alexa

“What if my date ghosts me?” “What if they don’t look anything like their picture?” “What if my hands are sweaty AF?”

Have you ever asked one of your friends any of these questions ahead of an important date? What if your friends are not available this Valentine’s Day, enjoying their own romantic ventures oblivious of those vital questions niggling away at the back of your mind?

Fear not, in this age of modern dating, fuelled by Tinder and DMs, Amazon’s Alexa is here to be your wingman this Valentine’s Day. The future of dating has moved from apps to voice.

With the busiest time for online dating being from the day after to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, earlier this year saw Match.com launch a new skill for Amazon’s Alexa which can provide the answers to all your pre-date qualms. Providing humorous and cheeky answers, the digital assistant spouts out information gathered from the largest survey of singles ever conducted, Match’s Singles in America study.

Creating a skill for Alexa essentially means uploading information to the cloud from which the device draws its information and, as explained in last week’s blog post, the brands who are getting there first are the real winners.

Match.com is not the only romantic brand to broaden their offerings to include Alexa’s support: EHarmony has created a skill that actually allows users to find themselves a date without even lifting their finger. Linking your online account and Three Day Rule’s skill provides single users with daily dating motivation and tips, to get people out of their comfort zone and away from habits that could be negatively impacting their dating game.

The future of modern dating remains topical after Black Mirror episode ‘Hang the DJ’ left everyone feeling uncertain about leaving our romantic fates down to technology and now we’re leaving our dating advice and potential future partner in the hands of a robot…

This leads us to consider the future of advice, not just for modern day singletons’ misgivings, but also to wider queries we may ask our friends for: should I visit a doctor? Where would you recommend I book my summer holiday this year? Does this dress suit me? Based on this, brands are faced with a number of opportunities to become a key source of trusted information when it comes to answering these questions and giving advice, at the sound of a word, by developing new skills for Alexa and other digital assistant technology.

 

Alexa, why should I care about smart speakers?
Iain Pope

Alexa, why should I care about smart speakers?

What did you get for Christmas?

Chances are, that if you’re into gadgets, it was an Amazon Echo.

The internet shopping giants are keeping the exact sales figures of their range of digital assistant under close wraps, but the fact that the Alexa app needed to operate them was the most downloaded on Christmas Day and for weeks afterwards on both IoS and Android platforms is a pretty strong signal that Amazon won the seasonal battle to be top dog under the techie Christmas tree. Amazon might be coy about detailing their massive growth, but informed industry experts think there are probably currently about four million of their smart speakers in the UK, and one recent survey suggested penetration will top 40% of all British households as early as this year. With Google, Apple and Samsung also all in the arena, the explosion in voice recognition and the generational disruption it represents for how we interact with technology isn’t science fiction, it’s here and now, and brands are already diving in, admittedly some with better results than others.

Whether it’s cooking tips (and abuse) from Gordon Ramsay as users cut their vegetables in their kitchen, or taking up the slack and reading a bedtime story to kids, the benefits of smart speakers seem endless. The number of new ‘skills’ (or apps) which the Echo devices can offer has risen from a dozen or so when it was first launched to approximately 30,000 now, and growing daily.

Crucially, the fact that it’s not just Amazon but independent companies that can develop new skills for Echo devices makes this pioneer period a real gold rush moment for any firms willing to take up the challenge. Gordon Ramsay aside, other early adopters like JustEat and VirginTrains are already translating the tech into sales. But like every gold rush, there are some who don’t always strike it lucky first time round. National Rail’s Alexa skill, for example, has left some users complaining in frustration that the Echo can’t differentiate between different stations in the same city, or has given out-of-date schedule information.

A quick look at #AlexaFail on Twitter provides enough proof that the tech is (often hilariously) still evolving. But despite the inevitable glitches, the rapid transformation of Amazon Echo and its competitors from parlour room novelties into genuinely life-enhancing helpers is happening, quite literally, as we speak.

Personalisation will be the next big leap forward. Once smart speakers can recognise individual voices it will be able to tailor results to preferences. Likewise, the integration of voice recognition with cars and all manner of smart devices from TVs, home heating and lightbulbs to ovens is already here.  All new BMW’s and Minis will have the technology by the middle of this year.  As an example, when the tired traveller can ask their car for nearby hotel or restaurant recommends and get a response tailored to their history, preferences and budget, and then have it booked for them, then the game will really have shifted another gear.

In the meantime those brands that can answer the questions consumers are asking, and those who learn from the mistakes of others, will be the real winners.