HYDERABAD, INDIA—VoyceFirst’s flagship, voice-based app is called “Qvick” and built for seamless hospitality interactions between guests and staff.
The technology start-up is fairly new on the scene. VoyceFirst’s business model is based on building voice intelligence for smart speakers to leverage Amazon’s Alexa and building skills for the device. Skills, also known as capabilities, help to make Alexa smarter and make everyday tasks faster, easier and convenient for customers.
In business for only 19 months, VoyceFirst CEO Anil Atyam said the company already has captured the attention of some of the big five-star chain hotels.
“We’ve had conversations with Oberoi Hotels & Resorts in pursuit of prototyping, Radisson Hotel Group for prototyping this product in the U.S. and Taj Hotels as well. We are still exploring opportunities and improving our product for a U.S. customer base,” said Atyam.
Atyam sees voice-activated devices such as Amazon’s Alexa as forward-thinking and he aims to be poised to leverage the technology for the hospitality sector.
“We conceptualized a few concepts for practical life. We also built several other skills for Amazon in the areas of education, hospitality, retail and more,” said Atyam. “In the context of hotels, we build skills to allow the hotel guests to interact seamlessly with Alexa for requests they may have, such as asking for extra towels, ordering room service, or other amenities. All of these things are done seamlessly with Alexa, and we created a software that is a personal voice assistant for every guest.”
Qvick is exclusively built for Alexa only and can be customized to a particular hotel.
“From the various departments—concierge, F&B, housekeeping—every hotel has a different offering. In some cases, the same chain of hotels can differ from location to location. We customize according to the hotel, but some things remain the same,” he said.
With Qvick, there is the ability to personalize offerings without a large investment.
“We have 30-40 hours of consultation hours of the offering,” he said. “The majority of hotels use existing apps for tracking all of these requests from guests, and what we’re doing with Qvick is we’re integrating the hotel’s ticket request apps. So, when a guest requests extra towels, it goes to the back-end system and can be done seamlessly. Operationally, nothing changes. From the guest experience, they don’t have to deal with the telephone, wait for assistance, etc. All of these things are eliminated with the use of Alexa.”