Amazon announced today its bringing voice assistant Alexa for Business settings, big and small, like hotels and co-working spaces. The new platform will let companies build their skills and integrations for practical and business use cases.
The interface has been progressing, and for a long time, it has been dominated by screens of all shapes and sizes, but now it has advanced to voice control technology. While many companies are coming up with voice interfaces like Google with Assistant, Apple with Siri, and Microsoft with Cortana, Amazon has been the most commanding with Alexa.
Amazon CTO Werner Vogels stated that voice support is a major focus for the company that will help to “unlock digital systems for everyone.” He continues that exposure to the workplace will improve Alexa by exposing it to new types of conversations. “The kind of language we use in our offices is sometimes radically different from the more conversational things we do in our (homes),” he told Axios. Alexa “will greatly improve by being exposed to different kinds of statements or conversations.”
Alexa for Business consists of several parts, including integrating enterprise software with Alexa and allowing individual businesses to write their own skills. The prime focus of Alexa for business is the conference room, and AWS is also working with other video and audio providers to be entitled to this.
Businesses can now build out Alexa skills for use within their own company with voice access to an employee directory; Alexa for Business has all the same capabilities as a regular old Echo.
Launching Alexa for business will also allow enterprise users to build apps and skills for calendar management, meeting room scheduling, and ordering supplies. It will also enable the users to access business information using the Alexa app on their phones.
Regarding the challenges, many users are already being skeptical of inviting Alexa into their business.
