Creating Alexa Skills
I interviewed Bob Stolzberg of Voice XP for Episodes 23 and 24 of the Sound In Marketing Podcast and he helps break down Alexa Skills in a way even I can understand. As Bob puts it, “Voice XP is the Wix of voice assistants”. They are blazing the way in utilizing the smart speaker to help assist and educate a global audience.
Bob and I talked about things like flash briefings (because personally I was confused) as well as going into some really practical and highly fascinating usages that an Alexa Skill can bring to businesses, government entities, and philanthropic organizations.
Voice Skills, New Technology, and How It All Goes Together
Bob Stolzberg operates remotely from his Water Lily farm in the midwest operating his software as a service (SaaS). When you can work anywhere…why not.
Voice XP is 3 years old and 100% focused on voice assistants through Alexa Skills and Google Actions for enterprise businesses like Hallmark, CenturyLink, TiVo, Square, Mercy Healthcare, Banner Healthcare, as well as smaller businesses ranging from lawyers to real estate agents. With years of experience in technology prior as well as his newer expertise in the voice industry, Bob has figured out the common denominators of voice and how it all fits together within so many of the different verticals. He has put together all of those figures and created “the Wix.com of Voice”. You don’t need to be a coder to figure this one out.
Voice technology, voice assistants in particular, actually provides businesses with an ROI within a no coding platform.
Building A List
Alexa Skills and Google Actions help build a list for your company; a pipeline in much the same way that a website collects information through contact forms and such.
Doing so through voice assistance makes it that much easier to collect that information that we already want and need anyway. Not only that, but you can provide your audience with information about your services and what you do faster. You can author these skills in a way to create “experiences” for audience engagement with a stronger chance of future recognition in the meantime. Using voice assistance can create a greater form of ROI for your business as well as a more one on one experience with your audience.
Wild West of Google Search Rankings
It is the very early days of voice search, which is precisely why we need to start playing and experimenting now while the competition is scarce. Everyone wants to rank higher on Google search and this is an ideal opportunity as companies can take advantage of just that in applying keyword search to their voice skills. It all depends on how you publish your skills.
The more keywords you put into your long and short description and “what’s new” field have the potential to pop up higher in your Google search rankings.
Reviews, active users, and the number of activations to your skills are also key, but metadata being plugged into the right fields is an easy way to guarantee you’ll be ready when Google really starts paying attention in their rankings algorithms.
Tips On Preparing Your MetaData
In the text of your skill, give leads and prompts to your listeners to ask more questions of Alexa and Google and how to “get to know” your company better. It’s easy to add content to your skill (Q&A, audio and video, or capture phone numbers and email addresses) so take advantage.
As a podcaster, you could have a skill that indexes all of your episodes giving multiple ways for your audience to engage with you.
As a real estate agent, you can give text or email prompts to customers or potential customers on further actions such as listings about to open or an event you might be hosting to draw in more business. It also works the other way for them as it can give a heads up that an action was taken, how it was taken, and how you should follow-up (ex. Someone requested more information on a listing by asking for a text message…and here is all their number, name, address, etc…all things that they revealed to you through the action they took from your skill).
Flash Briefing; What Is It?
Personally, I was confused by this one. I thought it was an email blast from a newsletter but it’s a bit more specific as I learned from Bob.
A Flash Briefing is a daily or weekly piece of audio content (a newsreel of sorts) that anyone can publish. Your audience initially enables your flash briefing on their smart speaker or voice assistant device and then from then on they just ask to hear “what’s new” with your content. Your flash briefing then gives them those updates and provides actionable steps to access it.
Flash briefings are another platform for people to put information about them and their company or brand out there. As we all know, there are a plethora of digital platforms out there. We’ve got to be available to be found and engaged with within as many of these as we can or we are not as likely to be discovered.
The unique thing about flash briefings is that it is information delivered to an engaged audience that is requesting the information in the first place. It is information someone has asked for. You already know that that person is invested enough to want to know more. It wasn’t just they accidentally clicked on a banner ad that got in their way of doing something else.
Voice In Government And Emergency Response
Municipalities and city affiliations have begun to use voice assistants as a communication tool; voting and polling information in particular. Where’s the closest polling place? What’s the absentee ballot process? Send me a sample ballot. How do I vote overseas? Skills have made it easier to access this information through voice for the elderly, military serving overseas, and even a whole new generation that may not be paying attention through traditional sources.
Could voice assistance help bring up the voting numbers in the younger generation? By putting politics into a different package, could it get more millenials (and after) to register and then vote in higher numbers? I believe that…it doesn’t hurt to try.
Even emergency management and response is actively budgeting for the future to utilize voice. What would it look like if we could access up to the second information on the latest fire or emergency so that we are better prepared at our home? There will be a day when this information will save a life.
Something that was developed primarily out of a “want” of creature comfort, voice assistance, now serves a purpose and helps to solve actual problems.
Women In Voice
VoiceXP is big on empowering women to get into voice tech with no prior experience. At Amazon, there are over a thousand open opportunities in voice right now. Bob believes that women are perfectly suited for careers in voice because of how empathetic they are. They also tend to be better communicators, and better writers in general. These all translate smoothly into voice technology. Writing and designing the Skills conversation are for those that already read and write and communicate effectively.
What VoiceXP has done and is actively engaged in now is coming along the organization Women In Voice www.womeninvoice.wordpress.com. Women In Voice is an association of women that helps empower women to get into the field of voice technology. Voice XP offers a free premium license for personal use to all Women In Voice members. It’s a free membership as of now, so ladies, get on over to Women In Voice and check out what they’re up to.
VoiceXP has also helped Girl Scouts at summer camps. They’ve set up workshops where they teach the girls how to write an Alexa Skill. Recently, they partnered with the corporate sponsor, CenturyLink, on World Thinking Day. They whiteboarded out building a skill with Girl Scout Troops to create a “Girl Scout Skill” asking questions such as tell me about the Girl Scouts or who’s the founder? From these developed questions, VoiceXP would show the girls how to program these questions into the technology and then listen back.
Without coding, the girls went through a process that taught them a voice technology skill. It built up their storytelling skills, inspired further exploration and creation, as well as providing them with the ability and knowledge to build further.
I never really thought about it but voice technology is a great way to inspire females within the S.T.E.M. program. As a female and a mother of a young daughter, I am truly grateful for VoiceXP’s role in this.
