How To Create An Alexa Skill For Your Business

It is undeniable that Alexa is increasingly present in homes around the world. Therefore, more and more companies are considering the development of a skill that can expand the possibilities of their business, giving more service to their customers.

In addition, it offers an image of being at the forefront of innovation. The use of Amazon Alexa has grown a lot in popularity and it is estimated that the number of device units will soon reach about 80 million units worldwide.

Alexa is a virtual assistant programmed by Amazon and that is present in its smart speakers, although it can also be installed as an app on all types of devices.

Their job is to help with doubts or questions, activate connected home functions, and carry out other commands such as turning on the music or turning a television on and off. But what really makes Alexa a more competent and complete device are the famous skills, created by different developers and companies.

What are Alexa skills?

A skill is a skill, tool, or feature added to Alexa by a third party. If we look at it closely, it can be compared to apps. In fact, the skill is installed on a mobile device, as if an application had been installed.

However, it is not installed from Google Play or the App Store, but the skill store can be accessed from the same Amazon Alexa application. Thanks to this, it is possible to increase the number of functions in which Alexa can help us. 

There is plenty of room to develop Alexa features for everyone. Now, Amazon has allowed him to develop his own skills without advanced knowledge of programming languages. This has allowed many users to tailor Alexa to their needs.

But now, the company has gone one step further where third parties can share the skills they have developed in the Amazon Alexa Skills Store. This has allowed many companies around the world to provide their services through this wizard.

What are Alexa skills?

A skill is a skill, tool, or feature added to Alexa by a third party. If we look at it closely, it can be compared to apps. In fact, the skill is installed on a mobile device, as if an application had been installed.

However, it is not installed from Google Play or the App Store, but the skill store can be accessed from the same Amazon Alexa application. Thanks to this, it is possible to increase the number of functions in which Alexa can help us. these are just a few examples of the endless options for customizing this assistant.

There is plenty of room to develop Alexa features for everyone. Now, Amazon has allowed him to develop his own skills without advanced knowledge of programming languages. This has allowed many users to tailor Alexa to their needs.

But now, the company has gone one step further where third parties can share the skills they have developed in the Amazon Alexa Skills Store. This has allowed many companies around the world to provide their services through this wizard.

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How to develop Skills for companies?

In order to develop Alexa Skills, the Amazon company has two fundamental services and facilitators. On the one hand, we have the Alexa Skills Kit or ASK for its acronym, which are free self-service tools that allow you to develop skills in a simple way. Also, you don’t need to know the complex programming language to be able to create functionality with ASK.

On the other hand, we have Amazon Web Services (AWS ) that provides advanced functions for the creation of more elaborate Skills. With AWS you can scale and give flexibility to Skills. Amazon Web Services allows you to share content, manage storage space or manage the calculation power of a functionality.

Elegir Blueprints

The first thing we are going to do is choose between the different Blueprints that we have shown you, we can comment on a simple one and later re-create new ones if we liked the experience.

Once selected, it will take us to the access request that we are going to complete with the same Amazon account that we have used on the mobile or on our Amazon Echo.

After the previous steps, the site itself shows us how this skill works, and, depending on the chosen skill, it will show us what we can tell Alexa and what it will answer. Finally, we just need to press the button to create our own skill and start developing it.

To make it faster and more intuitive in most of the Alexa skills, we already see all the sections filled in and we only have to modify them with the desired names and tasks. With this process, we can also totally change the meaning of the skill to adapt it to what we are looking for.

There are many companies that have specialized in creating on-demand Alexa skills for businesses. We can always contract their services or encourage ourselves to try them. The first thing we must do is download the Alexa application and then create an account or use the one we already have on Amazon.

Once done, we will access the Blueprints web, which has been created by Amazon to generate new Alexa skills. During the process, we can choose several predefined styles.

What Alexa says

We can also add more names or tasks, as well as modifications that will adapt to the skill we are developing. In the next step, we will be asked for options that we can configure or leave blank so that they are completely random. This will depend on Blueprint, which is a highly variable tool.

If we want, we can also choose what Alexa says when we use the skill, such as when we start a task, when we respond to a certain phrase, or customize the experience. Finally, we will name the skill we created to make it easier to identify. This process will take a few minutes and varies depending on the number of options and changes we make.

Once the process is complete, we can add the skill to our account and start enjoying it, as well as share it and make it reach as many users and clients as possible.