Amazon Echo: How People Use The Virtual Assistant?

Amazon Echo, which houses a virtual assistant dubbed Alexa, is quite popular with users. Alexa can be issued voice commands so that it can conduct a gamut of tasks that range from ordering you dinner to booking an Uber!

The quick responsiveness of the Echo is what makes it appealing to consumers. Once a user asks for the Alexa’s assistance, the Echo instantly connects to the Alexa Voice Service to perform tasks like, playing music, providing asked information, narrating news, sharing sports scores, weather details and more.

The Echo is equipped with far-field voice recognition technology, which enables the device to hear a user across the room even while music is being played.

However, the Amazon Echo is not merely used for shopping for things or ordering stuff and has a gamut of other uses. Users are enlisting Alexa’s help for more than buying things according to a new survey. As asserted by the company’s CEO Jeff Bezos in the past, Alexa is used for simpler tasks. This assertion is now supported by a new survey

How People Use It?

The Echo’s virtual assistant is basically being used by the people to simplify tasks around the house using its voice technology.

The chart based on the survey of 180 Amazon Echo users, conducted in 2016, has been shared by Statista.

The chart depicts that most Echo owners are adopting the device for a lot more than just merely purchasing things.

Out of the 180 Echo users surveyed, 82.4 percent people were likely to use the device for playing their favorite song or have requested the Amazon Echo for a specific genre or mood. Moreover, 40.9 percent of users have connected the device with Bluetooth to stream content from paid music services.

Nearly 66 percent of the people used Alexa for reading the news. The virtual assistant was used by 61.6 percent users to check the time and consequently setting the alarm (64.2 percent), where Alexa delivered the updates automatically.

As Echo is always connected to the cloud, 36.5 percent of the people tried the device for more challenging capabilities such as asking for the real-time traffic information.

Among the large number of users surveyed, 45.9 percent used Alexa to control their smart home connected devices. They used Alexa for controlling smart lights. They exploited the apparent features for activities such as, switching on the lamp, turning on the fan or diming the lights.

However, the top use for Alexa was to set a timer, a functionality that was put to use by nearly 84.9 percent of Amazon Echo users.

By comparison, using Alexa to shop for items from Amazon Prime was a paltry 32.1 percent. This was also the least use for the voice assistant. Alexa also helped many people manage their to-do list as this service was used by 32.7 percent people. To add an item to their shopping list, 45.3 percent users of Echo took Alexa’s help.

Alexa was also used to entertain people and was asked to tell a joke by 60.4 percent of the users.