Have you ever written an Alexa skill? Because as soon as you try that, you realize the limits of the slot/intent system that Amazon is pursuing. You will notice

Have you ever written an Alexa skill? Because as soon as you try that, you realize the limits of the slot/intent system that Amazon is pursuing. You will notice this especially when it came to names and letters. We built an Alexa skill that allowed sales executives to use an Amazon Echo to ask Salesforce questions such as "Who was my best sales person last month?" That worked great, but the executives we talked to mostly wanted specifics about particular cases. And Alexa could not figure out the company names. These tripped it up badly: Avon IBM Sinopec Volkswagon Alexa could not get these, which made the skill nearly useless. It is much easier to simply use a keyboard. And please consider the failed promises we've heard over the last 3 years. Remember "Invoxia will enable Alexa to tell which person is talking": http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/invoxia-will-allow-alexa-to-figure-out-who-is-speaking http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/invoxia-will-allow-al... One as limited options in terms of forcing Alexa to pause in certain parts of a word: http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/using-a-glottal-stop-to-force-the-amazon-echo-to-correctly-pronounce-tw http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/using-a-glottal-stop-... I wrote this when I was still optimistic: http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-to-build-conversations-via-the-amazon-echo http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-to-build-conversa...