What Happened
Google announced on Thursday that it is now allowing select developers to create pre-approved “conversational actions” for its smart speaker and Echo competitor Google Home. The “actions” are essentially Google Home’s version of Alexa Skills, which allows users to activate new capabilities made by third-party developers for Google Assistant. Google is recommending services like its own API.AI to help simplify the “action-building” process for developers. and says open access will roll out to all developers in early 2017.
It is worth noting that Google Home handles two type of “actions”: direct and conversational. It’s only the latter that are open to developers to work on. Direct actions — commands that don’t require a conversation, such as turning on your connected lights — still require a partnership with Google.
What Brands Should Do
This announcement marks the gate-opening for brands to get into Google’s digital assistant service and smart home ecosystem, a first step in making Google Home a brand-friendly platform as Amazon’s Alexa. As Google and Amazon continue to make strong pushes for their respective conversational products, more and more mainstream consumers will soon become reachable via those emerging voice-based devices. Therefore, brands will need to explore opportunities in building advanced applications for these emerging platforms with highly engaging user experiences and conversational interactions.
The Lab has extensive experience with building chatbots and Alexa skills and we are excited to explore the new possibilities that Google Home is set to unleash. To help brands navigate the challenges and opportunities that the rise of conversational interfaces brings, we developed a proprietary system for building, maintaining and analyzing conversational experiences called Dialogue that can guide you through every step of building conversational customer experiences. If you’re interested in learning more about this or have a client opportunity, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.
Source: The Verge
