Dive Brief:

• Amazon announced a new Alexa skill metrics dashboard in a company blog post.
• The purpose of the tool is to drive user retention and the dashboard gives skill developers data points and visualizations on customers, sessions, utterances and intents as well as improved data freshness.
• The skills dashboard includes five main tabs: an overview that offers a high-level look into a skill's performance, a customer tab that measures customer engagement over selected periods of time, a session tab that highlights what session types are most successful, an utterances tab that measures the quality of customer experience and an intents tab to uncover what skill features get the most use.

Dive Insight:

The dashboard is a positive step from Amazon to move Alexa skills from something of a novelty to a marketing asset that can be tracked and optimized. In late February, the number of Alexa skills available surpassed 10,000, but marketers have appeared to struggle with exactly how to utilize that information and make skills a component of larger marketing strategies. 

Part of that challenge was also negotiating a brand new messaging medium in voice-controlled home devices like the Alexa-powered Echo and Dot. In the nascent field of digital personal assistants which also includes Google Assistant, Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana, Alexa has emerged as an early leader, extending to third-party devices rather than being limited to Amazon hardware, as shown through integrations in smart cars with major automakers like Ford.

Developers and marketers alike should welcome the skill dashboard as a needed tool to maximize the value of the skills they release. To date, Amazon has not released much of its first-party Alexa data, but this move provides a clearer window into how customers actually engage with their assistants.