Send to Phone

Key takeaways

The Send to Phone feature will take your customers from their Alexa devices to their mobile phone, allowing them to access more detailed information or complete sophisticated tasks.

 

Need quick advice?

View the design checklist to create a Send to Phone experience.

 

In this article:

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What is Send to Phone?

As you design your skill, you might see opportunities to improve the customer experience through the Send to Phone (S2P) feature, by directing the customer from their Alexa device to their mobile phone via a push notification or notification from the Alexa app. This link takes the customer directly to the skill’s app or website. The customer can then pick up exactly where they left off, complete a task later, or perform an action that's only available on their mobile phone.

There are three key use cases where Send to Phone brings value to customers: (1) to provide complementary information, (2) to enhance searching experience, and (3) to help complete a task in an app or a website.
 

Complementary Information

Provide key information by voice, then follow up with an offer to view detailed information best served in an app or a website. Show order details, and non-temporal information such as interactive map, and more.

Enhanced Search

Particularly a great use case in headless device, quickly begin searches with voice and transition to a mobile app or website to browse, select, and/or complete a task. 

Task Completion

Trigger any functionality in your app that is deep link enabled. Start a workout, begin a recording, or change settings. 

Checklist to design a Send to Phone experience:

▢  Review key use cases of the Send to Phone feature, and determine whether your skill is a suitable use case

▢  Consider different types of devices separately while designing the Send to Phone feature

▢  Determine the interaction type (questions, hints, auto-send) to be used during the Send to Phone experience

▢  For “questions”, the skill should ask if the customer wants Send to Phone when follow up questions are anticipated

▢  For “hints”, the skill should hint the customer about Send to Phone feature when complementary information is available

▢  For “auto-send”, the skill should auto-send information when it is the option complete a task

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Send to Phone Customer Experience Example

Possible scenarios of using Send to Phone include starting search on an Alexa headless device, while showing the location of the nearest cupcake shops on mobile devices. Below is an example of using Send to Phone to display complementary information.

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How does Send to Phone Work?

Send to Phone is a complete, end-to-end design that can be incorporated into a skill. With Send to phone, Alexa for Apps sends a link via a push notification to the customer's phone. Alexa also sends a card to the customer's Alexa app home page. Customers receive the notification in the Alexa app on their Android or iOS phone. Below is how the customer experience is created:

Your skill should provide the following elements:

  • A hint or question to the customer, asking if they want a deep link sent to their phone (no TTS needed if using auto-send). See examples in the next section.
  • Both iOS and Android deep-links (based on the OS types that the website or mobile app supports).


The Send to Phone feature will provide the following elements:

  • Any logic and follow-up questions required to determine which phone to send the link to.
  • Any necessary push notification permissions questions/checks.
  • All prompts to cover various success and failure conditions.
  • A smooth transition back to the skill when the customer completes the experience.

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Interaction Types between customer and Alexa

There are three main interaction types between Alexa and Customers for Send to Phone: questions, hints, and auto-send. Click the following sections to view examples and best practices for each type.

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Do's and Don'ts

Don’t create a confirmation TTS message. 

This confirmation is handled by the Send to Phone design, so adding your own message results in Alexa saying the same thing twice. For example, do not create a message such as "Great! I’ll send a link to your mobile device."
 

Do consider different types of devices separately.

In some use cases, such as sending complementary image information, a Send to Phone offer might be appropriate on a headless device, However, showing images through the Send to Phone feature may not be necessary on a multimodal device where visual display is available.


Don’t interrupt the interaction flow with unnecessary Send to Phone features.

In some use cases, you would not want to cut off a customer’s interaction with Alexa by sending them over to another device. For example, if a piece of complementary information could be shown on a multimodal Alexa device, we should not send it to customer’s phone.


Do allow customers to interrupt Alexa by saying “Alexa, send to phone”.

This allows customers to complete their task timely, without the need to wait for Alexa to finish speaking.