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Alexa and Google Assistant Have a Problem: People Aren't Sticking With Voice Apps They Try (recode.net)
Amazon Echo and Google Home were the breakaway hits of the holiday shopping season. But both devices -- and the voice technologies that power them -- have some major hurdles to overcome if they want to keep both consumers and software developers engaged. From a report on Recode: That's one of the big takeaways from a new report that an industry startup, VoiceLabs, released on Monday. For starters, 69 percent of the 7,000-plus Alexa "Skills" -- voice apps, if you will -- have zero or one customer review, signaling low usage. What's more, when developers for Alexa and its competitor, Google Assistant, do get someone to enable a voice app, there's only a 3 percent chance, on average, that the person will be an active user by week 2, according to the report. (There are outliers that have week 2 retention rates of more than 20 percent.) For comparison's sake, Android and iOS apps have average retention rates of 13 percent and 11 percent, respectively, one week after first use. "There are lots of [voice] apps out there, but they are zombie apps," VoiceLabs co-founder Adam Marchick said in an interview.
I used to use Google Assistant daily, and I liked it. Now I almost never do, because it is buggy, and it gets buggier with each release. It's highly accurate, *when it works at all*.
Voice recognition quality:
The voice recognition quality is stunningly accurate. It almost never gets things wrong. This is the hardest part, and they nailed it. But it seems like they had an intern write the rest of the code. Maybe it just wasn't exciting enough?
Speed:
My Galaxy S5, in 2015: "Okay google" *beep* "Send a text to..."
My Galaxy S5, in 2017: "Okay google" (45 second delay) *screen flash* "Send a text to..." (15 second delay)
This isn't just my specific phone, because my wife has the same model, but with almost no apps installed, and it performs the same way.
Bad parsing code: ... 2 paragraphs of text..." Google shows me the exact correct text I spoke, in a text box, then promptly says "Who do you want to send this text to?" Confused, I respond "Harold Smith" then it correctly finds the contact, then says "What would you like the text to be?" I say the text, it transcribes it perfectly, then says "Who do you want to send this text to?"
If you give Google assistant a command that is more that some arbitrary limit, like 256 characters or something, it gets stuck in a loop.
I say "Okay Google, send a text to Harold Smith, saying that
Bad contact lookup:
I say "Okay Google, send text to Dad" then it says "I cannot find a contact named Dad." Then I open my contact list, and there is a single entry named "Dad" with a cell phone number on it. Same spelling, same case.
No retry logic:
Sometimes it tells me something like "I'm sorry, I wasn't able to contact the server, please repeat that again." Why would I have to repeat it? Didn't it just record my voice? Other times, it actually transcribes the text, then tells me it couldn't contact the server. Ummm.... what? And it does that even if the action is local and doesn't require the server, like running an app or adding an appointment to my local calendar.
Must look down at the screen to use it:
On my iPhone, it would repeat back to me the message and prompt me to confirm. With Google Assistant, I have to look down at my phone and read it. I used my iPhone to send voice texts while on the road. I can't do that with Google Assistant since the whole point is to not have to take my eyes off the road.
Poor app integration:
After I send a text, it isn't in my text history.