Give Your Brand a Voice with Alexa Skills: Navoo

Navoo is the new and most recent asset of IT Power Net, a web agency founded six years ago by Giorgio Magrin, with a core business initially centered on the development of websites. The rapid evolution of the market, hand in hand with the digitization of businesses, soon brought new opportunities to daily operations called Skills and voice interaction design. Navoo is today one of Italy’s major pioneers, with clients such as Hera Group, Audible, EndemolShine Italy, Pazienti.it and a turnover that continues to grow thanks to the continuous creation of exclusive skills for the Alexa voice assistant.

First: build a strong brand-centric project

Giving a voice to a brand means first activating a listening phase, essential for understanding what the customer's expectations are and predicting the final outcomes. "Asking questions and, at the same time, sharing them with the brand manager and marketing team of a company is the first step in developing functional skills for their use. What’s the target? Who and what will the skill be used for? What milestones should we achieve? What are the interaction dynamics? Listening to plan a content strategy is the main variable that will determine the development pipeline, remaining present until the skill is published in a continuous fine-tuning aimed at the final result.”

Design thinking and User Experience

Each agency or developer team adopts a personal approach, not necessarily fully digital at least in the first part of the design. “In Navoo, we often start from an analog road, we draw the skills by hand on a sheet of paper, then we move on to declination in the form of concept maps using diagrams.net or other available platforms. The reason is simple: to understand if the flow of skill contents works before passing it on for review to the customer who, in this way, is able to imagine its structure.” Explaining the solutions that will be implemented to meet the needs of the company and users, to underline once again how necessary the prototyping part is.

Branding and target amplification

“At this point in the timeline we won't hear the voice yet, here there will be a sound, a pause. Alongside the customer, we choose the tone of voice, how and with what contents it will speak to its audience, thus building the sound version of the brand”. Because today, and more and more in the future, brands will tune their services and their image in the voice ecosystem. “All companies will have a voice assistant precisely because users will assume they can use it, looking for and downloading a skill that today, for example, already exists as an app for mobile devices. They will bring the digitization of a service they already offer to an evolutionary stage, amplifying the target and also paving the way for the acquisition of new customer master clusters.”

Reaching a new customer audience

If until recently we got used to recognizing a brand by looking at a logo or reading a payoff, from now on we will follow its voice imprint. “It is organic growth, natural for both the brand and the target that, with Alexa, is no longer confined to users who, due to maturity or practical skills, are able to use a device that is not suitable for everyone. The simplicity of the Amazon devices in which the skills are implemented allows immediate use even for elderly people.

Navoo - reference skills

The Rifiutologist. This is the skill created for the Hera Group, a company engaged in the supply of energy, water and environmental services. It provides all the information necessary to communicate simply and effectively when and how the waste collection service takes place, divided by category, in a constantly updated weekly agenda.

Free fall. It is the skill developed for EndemolShine Italy, the official Alexa Skill version of a well-known Italian TV program which, thanks to the voice assistant, replicates and guides users through the various stages of an interactive quiz game.

English lessons with John Peter Sloan. It is the skill created for Amazon Audible that allows you to improve or test your level of English by participating in quizzes with questions and answers together with the well-known author, actor and English teacher.

Voice strategy will increasing become more important for brands. Build Alexa skills and give your brand a voice! Watch the full interview video with the Navoo team.