How to make Amazon Echo to Understand you better

Make Amazon Echo to Understand you better

With an on-call voice assistant living in future is great. It is except when she doesn’t understand your requests. Here are the five simple things you can do to ensure that you spend more time enjoying Alexa and less time yelling at her for misunderstanding you.

You should keep one big thing in mind when it comes to improving your Alexa experience. Artificial intelligence is in its absolute infancy at the moment. It helps to think of Alexa and similar voice assistants as literal infants. Be patient, you have to train them and even reward them when they get things right.

Train Alexa to Your Voice

Without voice training or initial setup, anyone can use Alexa. You may not realize you can train Alexa to understand your voice better as a result. If you haven’t done the voice training yet, you absolutely should. It only takes a few minutes, it’s simple, and it fine tunes Alexa to understand your specific speaking voice.

We detail the process, including how to conduct the training under optimum conditions in our guide to voice training with Alexa here. If you live in a house with multiple people, have each of them do the voice training as well.

Tell Alexa Where You Are (and What You Like)

Additionally, to training Alexa to your voice. It helps to dive into the settings. And fine tune things such as your location, your preferences for sports team and weather, your news preferences, and other settings.

By doing so, you help cut down the probability that the response Alexa gives to one of your commands is in error, as you’ve pre-set your preferences. That way, when Alexa is left trying to fill in the blank—be it your sports team of choice or the route you drive to work—is already filled in. You can read more about configuring these settings here.

You help cut down the probability that the response Alexa gives to one of your commands is in error. As you have pre-set your preferences. Alexa is left trying to fill in the blank.

Give Your Smart Home Devices More Distinct Names

If you use Alexa to control smart devices in your home such as Belkin WeMo outlets or Philips Hue lights. Then we have got a frustration busting tip for you. You probably named them with a naming convention when naming your smart home devices that makes the most sense to the human brain. Such as “Bedroom Nightstand Light 2” and “Bedroom Ceiling Light 1”, all under a group “Bedroom Lights”. To a human, those names are perfectly sensible. On concord, Alexa may have trouble distinguishing between them.

Usually, this is because the objects are too similarly named in this case. They all have the word “light” and “bedroom” in them. Instead of a smooth user experience when you say something such as “Turn on the bedroom lights”. You may end up with the wrong “bedroom” labeled lights turning on. The entire bedroom turning on, or Alexa simply asking which lights you mean.

You simply need to give your INDIVIDUAL ROOMS and zones clear names such as “Living Room”, and “Upstairs” to avoid that problem. Then give the devices themselves clear names that don’t overlap with any of the zones or rooms. Instead of “Bedroom Nightstand Light 1”, you might use “Mary’s Lamp” or “John’s Lamp”. Really, anything that doesn’t include the word “Bedroom”.

The final result is a much smoother experience that doesn’t leave Alexa scrambling to figure out which “Bedroom” device you’re talking about.

Be Clear and Specific

We’ll be the first to admit that we like using the shortest possible commands when talking to Alexa both due to it’s low-effort and because it’s fun to see Alexa grow in her ability to parse out commands. Practically speaking, the more terse you are with Alexa. The greater the chance that whatever command you are slinging at her will come back with an unsatisfactory result.

The more you say, the more Alexa has to work with. Whether you are requesting news, a particular song by a particular group or you are interacting with your smart home devices, err on the side of being wordier. Thus more specific for the best possible results.

Confirm When Alexa Gets It Right

Of all the things you can do to improve the Alexa experience. Here’s the thing people probably do the least. Tell Alexa when she’s right. This doesn’t just help you either it helps Echo users everywhere.

Every time you interact with Alexa, a companion “card” appears in the Alexa app on your mobile device. As well as on the web interface of your Alexa located at http://alexa.amazon.com/ when you are logged into your Amazon account.

You will find the response Alexa gave you on the card. Be it a direct service or answer she activated for you followed by a “Voice feedback” section. That details exactly what Alexa heard you say. It also includes a Yes/No prompt, so you can confirm that Alexa did or didn’t do what you wanted. You’ll be thanked for your feedback whether you tap Yes or No and be given the opportunity to fill out a more detailed feedback response.

If you don’t need to fill out the detailed response unless you feel the particular situation merits it. Just popping into the control panel every once in awhile. And Make sure that Alexa is understanding you or not, helps to improve the entire system.

A few of us have problems with Alexa misunderstanding us in the past. These five tips have made Alexa a much more accurate and helpful personal assistant.