As you design your skill, you might see opportunities to improve the customer experience by passing the customer from their Alexa device to their mobile phone. Possible scenarios include selecting an item from a large list of search results, or entering credit card information to complete a payment transaction.
The Send to Phone feature allows you to send a customer a link to their 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.
Send to Phone is a complete, end-to-end design that can be incorporated into a skill. Here’s how the customer experience is created.
The skill provides 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).
- Both iOS and Android deep-links (based on the OS types that the website or mobile app supports).
Send to Phone provides 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.
Note: Do not create a confirmation TTS message. For example, don’t have Alexa say, “Great! I’ll send a link to your mobile device.” This confirmation is handled by the Send to Phone design, so adding your own message results in Alexa saying the same thing twice.
There are three main interaction models for Send to Phone: hints, questions, and auto-send. Click the following sections to view examples and best practices for each model.
Hints are best used to inform a customer about the ability to send something to their phone, without pressuring them to respond. Hints are best used when the skill answers a customer’s request completely, but there’s an opportunity to take the experience a step further.
- Keep hint dialog short. It’s likely that the customer got the answer they wanted in this scenario. The customer will be frustrated if you add a lengthy response after they hear the information they want. Inform the customer quickly of a useful feature that could enhance their experience, and then get out of their way.
- Keep the hint dialog benefit-driven. Customers should hear the response and think it’s useful, even if they don’t choose to do it in that moment. Alexa (Skill): By the way, I can send [the game summary] to your phone if you’d like. Just ask me to send [the game summary] to your phone.
Questions work best when you can anticipate the likely follow-up action to a customer’s utterance, but want to get explicit customer consent before acting. When you ask the customer if they want to continue via phone, this interaction model gives you an option that would otherwise result in the customer failing to complete the experience.
- Use a question when there’s a good chance that the customer wants a link sent to their phone.
- Identify when a skill experience might become cumbersome or even impossible to continue via voice. Follow-up actions should remove barriers from the customer completing the experience.
Auto-send works best when sending a link would be the best way to complete the customer request, and you prefer to simply send the link without asking the customer for permission.
- Use auto-send when there is certainty that the customer will want a link sent to their phone.
- Comply with Alexa skill policies; links you send must be related to the customer’s request.
For additional resources on Send to Phone, please visit our documentation or apply to be a part of the developer preview.