NEW in ubisend: Voice Chatbots with Alexa
ubisend has always been at the forefront of voice technology. Back in 2017, we worked on one of the first Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant chatbots with UK newspaper Archant (read our case study).
Building an Alexa chatbot back then was a laborious process. There were no platforms, barely any documentation, and no best practices. We paved the way then and have been fascinated by voice ever since.
Today, we are excited to release Amazon Alexa as a new channel integration on the ubisend chatbot platform.
Create Alexa chatbots easily with no-code
Building an Alexa chatbot from scratch was a fun challenge for us back in the day but clearly not something we would wish on any of our customers today.
Instead, we've made building an Alexa chatbot as easy as building any other chatbots on our platform. Use our no-code chatbot platform and drag-and-drop conversation builder to create an Alexa chatbot in no time.
Why Amazon Alexa?
Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are the two main voice channels. They have been toe to toe in the race for world domination since their release almost a decade ago.
Here are some insightful statistics of the current state of play:
- Nearly 70% of smart devices are powered by Alexa (source).
- There are over 100,000 skills on Alexa (source).
- In 2020, Alexa became compatible with over 100,000 smart home devices (source).
While it's clear Alexa is currently in the lead, we're not sleeping on Google Assistant. Stay tuned!
Use case: Breckland Council innovate with an Alexa chatbot
One of our customers, Breckland Council, have immediately snapped up the opportunity to work on Alexa.
Breckland's text-based chatbot has already achieved much. A couple months after its release, it already automatically answers 80% of inbound customer service enquiries. But they wanted more, and more innovative.
Working with their customer service department, our implementation team put together an Alexa Skill that allows residents to ask questions about their council and get bin pick up information.
This is only phase one of the voice project, with plans to automate more processes via Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant in the months to come.
Best practices for building voice chatbots
While using voice devices has gone completely main stream, building for voice is still somewhat uncharted territory.
What are the pros and cons of using voice? How should you structure a voice interaction? Should you rely on visuals at all, given that some devices have screens, or stick to text only?
These are the sorts of questions ubisend has been grappling with for years. Back in 2017, we put the first best practices together for building voice automation -- and we are still refining them today.
As we release more voice-based channels for the ubisend platform, we will also share more of the knowledge we've acquired over the years. To get you started, here are our best practices to building an Alexa chatbot.
Get started
Building an Alexa chatbot is now available to all ubisend customers. Log into your platform and head to Engage -> Channels to get started.
