AiC Episode 64
In this episode, Teri welcomes Brielle Nickoloff and Neha Javalagi from the company Witlingo.
Welcome, Brielle and Neha!
Teri met Brielle and Neha at the recent Alexa Conference and is featuring them on the podcast to talk about some incredible products that they have launched, namely; Castlingo (a micro-podcasting tool which has been live for a while now) and Buildlingo (which they just launched). Brielle is the Lead for Product Marketing and Neha is the Lead for Product Management, and they’re going to talk about how their products make it so simple for people to get their content onto a voice assistant platform.
Witlingo
- They started in early 2016. The founder of the company, Ahmed Bouzid, was on the Amazon Alexa team.
- They focus on building products and solutions to enable brands and companies to get their presence onto voice in a way that provides a great customer experience for their own customers. It requires no coding.
- They started out building custom skills for people.
Castlingo
- It’s a micro-podcasting platform. It’s an app available in both iOS and Android.
- Anyone who wants to share their thoughts with the world can record up to 77 seconds of audio, post them on their own branded Alexa skill or Google Action. The audio content will be searchable so people can get the audio content that matches their interests which makes Castlingo interactive. The audios are referred to as “casts”
- They did beta testing and realized that 77 seconds is good enough time to get across one particular idea or thought. People can also convert the 77-second audio into a flash briefing.
- They visualize a future where casts can interact with each other.
Buildlingo
- It’s a product that enables a brand or company to create and maintain a voice experience on Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant by just recording audio clips on a mobile app. The audio can be focused on helping customers quickly get answers to questions about the brand or the company’s products and services.
- The most challenging part for companies when they want to develop a skill is how to design a compelling, delightful and good user experience.
- Witlingo understands what a good voice experience entails and have created template-like solutions that anyone can use easily. A user records audio snippets on the app and inputs them into a template by assigning each audio into the relevant section of the template.
- A company can even convert its FAQs into an interactive voice experience.
- Along with the Buildlingo app, users are also provided with a web portal which provides them with analytics on how their skill or action is doing, what customers are asking, what the frequently used keywords are, and other things. They can also upload MP3s into the web portal.
- They already have brands that are using Buildlingo like publishers providing information about the next books that are coming out. There are schools that are using it to provide information to teachers about school events and other things.
- Every audio that is recorded within the app or uploaded into the portal is automatically indexed in the backend.
- There is a manual tagging system in the portal so users can assign keywords to audios if they need to.
- Anybody who needs to sign up for Buildlingo can get the mobile app and start recording audios or record the audios and upload them to the portal. Witlingo can also provide voice actors if a brand or company needs them.
- Witlingo can have a company’s Buildlingo skill set up in just a matter of days. The skill takes about 4 or 5 days to be up and running.
List of resources mentioned in this episode:
Other Useful Resources:
- Voice in Canada: The Flash Briefing
- Complete List of Alexa Commands
- Alexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in Canada
- Teri Fisher on Twitter
- Alexa in Canada on Twitter
- Alexa in Canada Facebook Page
- Alexa in Canada Community Group on Facebook
- Alexa in Canada on Instagram
- Please leave a review on iTunes
- Shopping on Amazon.ca