Most people use smart speakers at home either in the living room, bedroom and kitchen. However, Alexa may be best used in the workplace.If you have Amazon for Business, you may find that it works very well at keeping you focused, no matter the size of your office.

Here are a few reasons why Alexa for Business is the future of workplace productivity.

Collecting data

First, Amazon for Business is great at collecting data to be used for marketing purposes; for example, it can track the number of calls taken per month, the average time spent on hold and the number of calls being held in a queue.

This data is great for creating a data-driven marketing plan.

According to ComboApp, data-driven marketing is as follows:

“The methodology of extracting actionable insights tied to consumer behavior from large data sets in order to predict consumer behavior in relation to new products, marketing positioning and users’ likelihood of interacting with a brand.”

Applying this to Alexa and you can use it to feedback the results in a real-time dashboard and make informed business decisions.

Making appointments

According to Digital Authority Partners, Alexa for Business is great at making appointments with clients. Whereas normally you would have to stop what you’re doing, open the calendar and fill in the information, it’s a lot faster to ask Alexa do it for you and allows you to stay focused on the current task.

Simply connect Alexa to your calendar via the mobile App.

Select Settings > Alexa Preferences > Calendar.

Sign in to your calendar service and select what Alexa can access. It works with all the major applications including the iCloud, Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook.

Once set up, say “Alexa, create a calendar appointment”. Alexa will then ask you for the date time and the event title. You can skip the follow-up questions by saying “Alexa, schedule [event] for [date] at [time]”.

To find out what you have going on that day, say “Alexa, what’s on my calendar?”

Setting reminders

Forget setting reminders on your phone and let Alexa do it for you. When the time comes, Alexa for Business will read out your reminder so you don’t miss any important meetings or miss a deadline.

Say “Alexa, set a reminder for [event] at [time]” to create the reminder.

Alexa can be used for more than just business reminders. Save writing it down in your diary or to-do list, ask Alexa to remember that information. Say “Alexa, remember [information]”.

To get it to read back to you, ask Alexa to recall it using a few keywords and it will repeat your request.

Alexa can also be synced to a to-do list app such as AnyList and Picniic and read back your items there.

Open the Alexa app and go to Settings > Lists. Choose your to-do list provider, login and link it to your Amazon account.

Once set up, say “Alexa, add [item] to my [list name] list,” or to know what’s on it, say “Alexa, what’s on my to-do list?”

Making phone calls

Alexa for Business can support voice calls across multiple devices, meaning it can be used as a speakerphone.

To activate this, open the Alexa app and open the speech bubble. Follow the instructions, enter your phone number and verify it.

To make a call, say “Alexa, call [contact]”.

Alexa will then repeat the contact name or phone number to ensure you are calling the right person. Confirm that the information is correct and Alexa will make the call.

Now, for those of you that have an Android phone, Alexa can also send text messages.

Say “Alexa, text [contact]” followed by your message. If you need to add any punctuation, tell Alexa what you would like inserted.

Playing background noise

Whether you want sounds of the ocean or music to help you concentrate, Alexa can play music in the background to help you concentrate and boost productivity.

Since you’ll be playing the music or sounds through the Echo, you don’t have to scroll through your phone to find the song, use any buttons to increase volume, etc.

Plus, since you won’t be on your phone, there are no temptations to browse social media or watch a YouTube video and distract you from work.

Alexa has a few sounds built-in. Say “Alexa, play [sound]” and it will play it for an hour.

If you have a Spotify account, you can sync it to Alexa for Business.

Open the app and go to Settings > Music & Media and link your account.

To play a song, say “Alexa, play [song title] on Spotify”.

Finding helpful information

Instead of typing into a search engine like Google or other applications to search for an answer, why not ask Alexa to do it for you? This will save you time and prevent you from exiting your current task.

For example, you can ask Alexa to pull up the latest statistics during a team meeting to help define the marketing strategy.

Simply say “Alexa, [ask the question]” and it will conduct a search. It will reply with the most relevant answer, usually the first result in Google.

One real-life application of this comes from Mayo Clinic, who has created a new Alexa skill that gives patients instant access to first-aid information. They receive self-care instructions and quick answers from reliable healthcare sources.

Staying focused

Amazon for Business can prevent you from procrastinating and keep you on track with your workload. Before taking a break, you can use Alexa to set a timer for a few minutes so you can browse the internet or chat with friends guilt-free before getting back to work.

Of course, it can’t make you work but the sound of an alarm should be enough to tell you to put the social media away.

To get Alexa to set an alarm, say “Alexa, set an alarm for [time of day]”

Conclusion

The workplace has many uses for Amazon for Business. It improves productivity and keeps everyone focused on the task at hand.