From Click Consult's Benchmark Search Conference 2018, Hilton Manchester Deansgate, 5th September. Presented by Nick Wilsdon, Search Product Owner, Vodafone.

1. Understanding Alexa Skills

2. Insert Confidentiality Level in slide footer 2 14 September 2018
Why should you listen to me?
19 years SEO experience
Search Product Owner, Vodafone
Group since 2014
Manages search deployment
across 26 international markets to
516m mobile customers

3. Why focus on Alexa?
3 14 September 2018

4. Google
4 14 September 2018
Understanding the market landscape
Echo
Alexa Assistant
Google Home HomePod N/A
Siri CortanaAssistant Name
Voice Devices
Amazon
Partnerships have potential to disrupt market share i.e. SONOS or Beats but consider
white-goods brands and social assistants (Facebook)
Apple Microsoft
OS Integrations Fire Chrome / Android OS X / iOS Windows

5. 5 14 September 2018
Amazon Echo vs. Google Home (US)
VS.
GoogleAmazon

6. 6 14 September 2018
Amazon Echo vs. Google Home (UK)
VS.
GoogleAmazon

7. 70%
24%
6%
US Voice-Enabled Speaker User Share by
Player 2017
Amazon Alexa Google Home Other
Source: eMarketer, April 2017
“75% of US
households will have
Smart Speakers by
2020”
Growth rate is
comparable to the
early years of
smartphone adoption
Source: Gartner, Edison Research
2017
Amazon Alexa owns 70% of the US market

8. What are people doing on voice devices?

9. Voice device skills are on the rise
Now >30,000 Alexa Skills available
globally (March 2018) vs. 1650 Google
Actions
https://www.codecademy.com
/learn/learn-alexa
https://developer.amazon.com
/alexa-skills-kit

10. Will Amazon maintain their market lead?
• Amazon has pioneered and led
e-commerce excellence
• Using their prime network to
push voice device units
• Although approach has been a
little manual (lacking AI) they
have taken early lead
• Amazon is already a
transactional platform (credit
cards on file for all users)

11. The language of Alexa
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12. Anatomy of an Alexa Utterance
Alexa, ask Vodafone how much is my bill?
Wake word
Starting
phrase
Skill
invocation
name
Utterance

13. Wake word
• Currently there are only 4 options (Alexa,
Amazon, Echo and Computer)
• Users are requesting custom wake words
• Custom wake words would increase security
• Paradoxically, lack of device and assistant
standardisation will result in users sticking to
standard brand terms

14. Starting Phrases
Starting Phrase Example
Ask <invocation name> Alexa, Ask Vodafone
Begin <invocation name> Alexa, Begin Vodafone
Launch <invocation name> Alexa, Launch Vodafone
Load <invocation name> Alexa, Load Vodafone
Open <invocation name> Alexa, Open Vodafone
Play <invocation name> Alexa, Play Vodafone
Play the game <invocation name> Alexa, Play the game Vodafone
Resume <invocation name> Alexa, Resume Vodafone
Run <invocation name> Alexa, Run Vodafone
Start <invocation name> Alexa, Start Vodafone
Start playing the game <invocation name> Alexa, Start playing the game Vodafone
Tell <invocation name> Alexa, Tell Vodafone
Use <invocation name> Alexa, Use Vodafone
• The language of Alexa
voice devices
• This vocabulary rapidly
expanding i.e. what,
give and order
• You can assign several
utterances to the same
custom intent, in fact
this is recommended in
your mapping for real
world language use

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Source: Study of 37,000 Alexa utterances Q1 2018
Starting phrase vocabulary is evolving so play it safe

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Source: Study of 37,000 sample Alexa utterances Q1 2018
Play it safe in your starting phrase choices
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
ask open start what's play tell launch what give how when who get begin
Starting Phrase Frequency Distribution 2018
No. ofOccurances Distribution(%)
• Ask is the most popular
term, found in 28% of our
sample utterances
• Open is second with 21%
distribution
• Interestingly, other
options tail off sharply,
How is only found in 2%
of our sample
• As with blue-underlined
links, stick to common
usage to improve UX

17. Anatomy of an Alexa Request
Alexa, ask Vodafone how much is my bill?
Wake word
Starting
phrase
Skill
invocation
name
Utterance

18. Skill Invocation Name
• Must be easy to remember
• Cannot be changed once skill is certified
and published
• Evidence of name squatting across voice
device platforms, register your brand
terms now
• Alexa requires brand ownership
documentation for single terms but allows
invocation name duplication
• Google focused on unique term
registration (gold rush mentality)
“the first time [users] find
themselves saying
something like, ‘Cortana,
open x x cat facts 0178 x x,’
it’ll become clear that
Google and Microsoft made
the wrong choice.”
- Eric Olson from 3PO-Labs

19. Anatomy of an Alexa Request
Alexa, ask Vodafone how much is my bill?
Wake word
Starting
phrase
Skill
invocation
name
Utterance

20. Utterance
• Natural, real world language that is easy
to remember
• Use your data to optimise these queries
– Google Search Console (GSC)
– Scrapped from Google Suggest
– SEO tool data
– Google Keyword Tool
– Internal search data
• Manual variations are required at the
moment (30 recommended per intent)
• Alexa provides build-in slots and custom
slots for utterance construction
• Pay close attention to your comments
on the Amazon platform. Early
adopters are trying to help make skills
better. This feedback will enable you to
refine queries

21. What makes a good
Alexa strategy?
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Is Voice Search over-hyped?
• Study of 1000 U.S. consumers in
May 2018 by Rich Relevance
• 70% of respondents had never
used voice to search for products
• Voice search is not useful for
searching for products (currently)
this was a terrible study
• How can hands-free, voice first
interactions work?
Source: https://goo.gl/SR2xoY

23. What are people doing on voice devices?

24. Voice strategy compliments your other platforms & activity
• Voice skills are not apps
• Quite rightly, e-commerce is still
focused on mobile/web
• Voice skills should compliment this
activity
• Should add convenience and reduce
friction for customers
• They should help build customer
loyalty to your brand
• “Hands-free, voice-first interactions is
at base-level, simply another input
method ”
Voice
WebMobile
Gerry White, Just Eat

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What is the key then to a good voice device strategy?
Organic
Paid Media
ATL
Email
Customer Experience

26. Provide user actions to ATL brand advertising
• Brands are pushing voice Skills as
market differentiation to their
competitors
• Low-barrier to entry makes this an
easy content-marketing or online
PR strategy
• Great way to engage brand or PR
departments within your
organisation
• As should be best practice, ATL
brand advertising drives interest
and online harvests this

27. Align with your featured snippets (organic) strategy

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Using Alexa skills to connect to your audience (email marketing)
Your Brand®
• Skills are a great way to connect to an early
adopter audience (ABC 1)
• Virtual assistants will likely hit email
marketing hard but also opens new
opportunities
• Amazon audience was 310mln in 2016. US
population was 325m in 2017
• Customer Profile API retrieves user data, i.e.
name, phone number and email.
• Only requires verbal permission, not account
linking through web/app (reduces friction)
• Will allow you to build connections and even
assess viability of Amazon B2C or B2B
service offerings

29. Podcasting and audio opportunities
• 96% of UK population listen to
radio but only 6% listen to
podcasts
• Voice device penetration will
significantly disrupt user
consumption of audio content
• Brands can deliver their own
skill to deliver audio content
and (or) simply optimise
discovery within other skills
(TuneIn, AnyPod etc.)

30. Improve customer experience and call centre deflection

31. Users are positive about voice skills
Source: Study of 15,230 Alexa skills Q1 2018

32. Inspiration from Ocado and Just Eat

33. Brands entering the age of data-first discovery
Only 15% of FTSE 100
companies have an Alexa
Skill
Source: Vodafone Study May 2018
• Alexa Skills marketing place is
largely full of non-brand
content.
• First-adopters have built games
and fun skills (20% of top skills
are games)
• Brands have the services and
data points needed within to
take user skills to the next level
• Voice will resolve data
management and access issues

34. Does voice live up to the hype?
• Hands-free, voice first
interactions
• If we only view as an input
method, impossible to see it
failing. It improves
convenience and reduces
friction
• It will not replace e-commerce
channels (yet) but voice can
augment their activity and
improve customer experience

35. Next steps and homework
Buy voice device in next Amazon sale, explore competitor Skills
Encourage customer or in-house developers to launch basic skill – ! hackathon
Register your brand terms across voice platforms
Think about omnichannel marketing opportunities and reducing friction
Develop data-first access and interactions

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Why should you listen to me?
Thank you
What questions
do you have?
@nickwilsdon