AiC Episode 85

In this episode, Teri has a conversation with Bob Stolzberg, the Founder and CEO of VoiceXP, the most advanced Alexa skill-building tool in the world.

Enjoy!

Bob and Teri will talk about how the idea for the gamified flash briefing came up, how Bob got involved in the project, the great experience they had creating it, and how amazingly well it’s done so far.

Teri’s Idea for Crack the Code

  • He has been very obsessed with flash briefings and has been doing them for more than 500 consecutive days.
  • He wanted to do something special to celebrate his 500th episode and thank his listeners for supporting the flash briefing. He also wanted to thank the guests he had on the Alexa in Canada podcast.
  • He came up with the idea of creating a gamified flash briefing and the first challenge to overcome was how to create a gamified flash briefing when a user can only interact one way with flash briefings. So he came up with the idea for an Alexa skill that he could tie into the flash briefing in a way that listeners could play some type of game by being interactive with the skill based on what they hear from the flash briefing. That’s how he came up with the skill, Crack the Code.
  • Listeners listen to the Voice in Canada flash briefing for a clue or riddle that they have to solve after which they then go to the Crack the Code skill, interact with the skill, and if they can put in the right codes, they get to win some great prizes.

Crack the Code with Bob Stolzberg of VoiceXP - Part 1

Bob’s Role and Experience in Creating Crack the Code

  • Bob’s platform VoiceXP enabled the development of the skill. Their approach in designing VoiceXP was focusing on making it as simple as Craigslist. It is based on simply filling in web-based fields, similar to Craigslist.
  • Bob wanted to help Teri build an amazing experience and he had fun creating it.
  • Teri would come up with a new feature, pitch it to Bob and the VoiceXP team, and they would develop it and test it within a day.
  • The skill was deployed to 5 different English speaking countries so people could go to their native Amazon.com skill stores to find it.
  • Crack the Code had an amazing reach on social media and even went viral within the voice space.
  • The first day it launched, someone contacted Teri about the skill not working, but when Bob looked into it, he found out that the skill had overwhelmingly heavy traffic. That was because of its global deployment, awesome sound effects, and the different voice devices people were using to access it. The problem was not with the skill, it was Amazon Alexa system-wide errors.

The Texting Feature Within the Skill: Teri

  • Bob and his VoiceXP team were able to implement this great feature.
  • Teri wanted to reward listeners, reward supporters, bring in more listenership, and also figure out how to integrate a flash briefing, a podcast, website assets, and the game skill in such a way that a listener who cracks the code would be able to go Crack the Code and play the game, and then go to the Alexa in Canada website and enter the contest.
  • Despite it being a multi-step game, it has had an overwhelming response. The website traffic has been through the roof.
  • To make it as seamless as possible, they came up with the idea to allow people playing the game to enter their phone number and get a text directly with the link when they need it so that they could go directly to the website. The VoiceXP platform made that all possible.

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