VOICE ENTREPRENEUR with Ben Smith #11

 

(To listen on Alexa, go HERE. To listen on iTunes, go HERE.)

 

“Remember all of those videos with two year olds swiping the iPad and the iPhone? Voice has the same interactivity– the same things are happening right now for devices like the Alexa, Google Assistant, and Google Home. Kids already know how to interact with them, and it’s just much more natural to them.”

— Arte Merritt, CEO of Dashbot.io

 

SHOW NOTES:

 

Dashbot.io: https://www.dashbot.io/

Dashbot Alexa Stats: https://reports.dashbot.io/ci/alexa

Arte Merritt: https://twitter.com/artemerritt

 

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SUMMARY:

 

Ben: Hello everybody! This is Voice Entrepreneur with Ben Smith. I am here with none other than the CEO of Dashbot.io. You guys know this is my favorite service online right now. Dashbot.io is a voice and bot analytics platform doing the coolest stuff in the space. It helps us understand the impact and how to measure all of our activity with voice. Say hi, Arte!

Arte: I appreciate this opportunity Ben!

Ben: So I want to cut right to it. How do you help voice entrepreneurs use your tools to succeed?

Arte: Well to back up the space is just happening. We really believe conversation is the future, especially voice devices because remember all those videos that the two year old swiping the iPad and the iPhone. They do have the same interactivity– the same things are happening right now for devices like the Alexa, or google assistant or google home where kids already know how to interact with them, and its just much more natural to them. Our platform has three key components to it. There’s the traditional analytics, it measures users, retention, basically table stakes. Then there’s all the conversational specific metrics at things like the NLP intent where your skill or chatbot is breaking down and messages and  user experience. And then the third part is really around and the third part is really the tools to take action on the data and that’s anywhere from alerts and live person takeover depend or comparison benchmarking tools. So what we see voice entrepreneurs use this for across the board to do create a better user experience, increase engagement and retention and then hopefully for increased monetization too.

Ben: Yeah, I think that’s incredible. I know that I’m checking your site now every day. You have voice analytics where I can go in, I can see the activity for different skills. I can see how quickly different skills are increasing in terms of activity usage, how fast a category may be growing. It’s really pretty incredible how how much you include all for free. What what are you noticing in the in the Voice space? Or have you seen anything in particular work really well?

Arte : There’s people building personal chat bots, celebrity chat bots and maybe we’re trying to see where it goes going to do here. If you go back to the mobile days, who would ever thought of using the microphone as part of an app and Smule made all of these games all around it. So we’re going to see the same thing in voice and conversation. But to answer your question, some of the things that work are creating personalities for these bots to help with engagement. You could try and get acquire users through social media advertising. Whether it’s paid or organic, it works. What was actually really interesting is an agency created a whole bunch of Easter eggs inside their skill and then they went into Reddit and talked about how to access them.

Ben: Wow. That’s That’s fascinating. I think that, you know, with voice, we’re just beginning to figure out what works like you’re saying and giving users the ability to continually explore within a voice application is certainly part of the of the big puzzle. I know I’m thinking about it that way.

Arte: Yeah, there was something other things just because it’s voice like the end of a little bit more concise, you know, narrow and the use case down a little bit. It’s interesting with these platforms and we think of web and mobile. You can click with those, but in a conversation interface people can say whatever the heck they want to buy it and you still may or may not respond to these things. So it’s really important to look at the analytics to see what people are saying and how you’re handling those things. We found in a concise responses you know we have a demo and at the same skill and it someone else, you know, someone asked the same email, like, tell me about gosh by miss that one sentence I mean probably back just saying that one sentence in the skill is to login button status stop after like the, you know, being a little bit more concise, there is helpful. It’s kind of marrying the use cases that a little bit can be helpful, creating a personality is, you know, giving some set of delight to the person to, you know,

Ben: Thank you so much, Arte, do you have any final tips or ideas for users? Or ways that they can use your platform intelligently or creatively?

Arte: Yeah, definitely. It’s meant to be, you know, self service. You know what is the easiest thing is? How did your your skill respond because you can look at the transcripts and see where a drop off at abandonment occurs, so I highly recommend looking at the data and and see what folks are doing. And then go back and add support for those things that are that are missing.

Ben: That’s phenomenal, and again I can’t stress enough this is that this is my favorite analytics platform I’ve seen in a very long time. So I hope everyone checks out www.dashbot.io. Thank you so much for the time.

Arte: Yeah, thanks. I really appreciate this, this is awesome!

ben: Cool. Cool. All right, everybody. We will check back in with you very soon, so keep listening to Voice Entrepreneur. Talk to you all later. Bye bye!

 

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