In “The Growing Adoption of Voice Commerce,” my previous post, I addressed how Amazon’s Alexa is the leading voice-based assistant.
I mentioned in the post that Amazon now offers Alexa Voice Service, an API, and the related Alexa Skills Kit, a collection of third-party APIs and tools that make it easier to create voice-driven capabilities for Alexa.
You can search for and enable Skills in the Alexa iOS or Android app or from the Alexa Skills “store” on the website. To use an Alexa Skill, first enable it, and then speak your request based on the example phrases shown in the app.
There are thousands of Alexa Skills. All are free to use and quite a few are related to shopping (for consumers) and selling (for merchants). In this post, I’ll highlight ten of these.
Skills for Shopping
DailyDeal. DailyDeal reads the current deals from Amazon. Once someone likes a deal, she can use a voice command to order the deal on Amazon using Alexa.
DailyDeal
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Deal Sniper. Deal Sniper is designed for finding deals specific to a brand instead of sharing the complete list of deals. It searches the web based on the brand name and returns any deals that it finds. This is helpful if a consumer knows the brands to shop.
Deal Sniper
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WhatsThePrice. WhatsThePrice returns the current price of a single item. The existing limitation is to restrict the item name to one word but as the Skill gets updated to support phrases, its adoption will presumably grow.
WhatsThePrice
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Ask Peapod. Ask Peapod allows ordering groceries using voice commands, so a consumer can order even when his hands are busy, such as when washing vegetables. The order can be delivered within a couple of hours using Amazon Prime Now. Moreover, a consumer can keep adding groceries to his shopping basket as he remembers them and order at the end of the day. Ask Peapod also allows reordering of previous purchases.
AskPeapod
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1-800-Flowers. The 1-800-Flowers Skill allows you to order flowers just by picking a name from your contacts, a delivery date, and the name of the flower arrangement. It works well when a consumer knows the name of the flower arrangement. It requires linking of an existing 1-800-Flowers account, but after that it is easy to send flowers.
1-800-Flowers
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Gift Genie. Gift Genie suggests a gift using generic terms like “mom,” “dad,” and “wife” and the choices can then be purchased on Amazon. This works with another Skill called the “birthday reminder.”
GiftGenie
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Make My Look. Make My Look is a styling helper. Users can find matching colors by just asking a question, such as, “What color looks good with green?”
Make My Look
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Skills for Selling
Vendors that support the merchant community have also launched Skills on the Alexa Skills store. Here are three examples.
3dcart. The 3dcart Skill is for merchants who use 3dcart, the ecommerce platform. Merchants can use voice commands to check for the daily sales from their site or even ask for the annual sales number.
3dcart
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UPS. The UPS Skill allows shipments to be tracked using voice commands. It also supports finding a UPS location and getting an estimate on a shipment. After linking the UPS account, the Skill allows checking for shipments without using a tracking number.
UPS
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Web Analytics. The Web Analytics Skill provides the visitor traffic from Google Analytics. The merchant’s Google Analytics account needs to be linked before using the Skill.
Web Analytics