Flu Doctor Alexa Skill
Seattle Children’s Hospital partnered with Boston Children’s Hospital to create an Alexa skill to build trust in the science and safety behind the flu vaccine. Seattle Children’s contributed the knowledge and voice of Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson to write the scripts for the skill. Boston Children’s hospital contributed the back-end development of the skill. We timed the launch of the skill around the 2018 NFID Flu Press Conference which Dr. Swanson was invited to speak at.
Goals
- Build trust in the science and safety of the flu vaccine.
- Create a cross-country partnership between two leading children’s hospitals.
- Work to create a capacity for voice projects at Seattle Children’s.
- Leverage partnerships with trusted outside organizations CDC, NFID, AAP, and WA DOH to vet and promote our script and skill.
- Create and launch a communications and PR campaign to promote the skill and gain users.
Findings & Reach
| User Enablements: |
people who enabled the skill within their Alexa app |
2,306 |
|---|---|---|
| Total Utterances: |
number of times users talked to Alexa within our skill |
3,750 |
| Unique Customers: |
number of users who opened and used the skill once enabled |
781 |
| Total Sessions: |
number of times users interacted with skill |
1,001 |
| Number of Times What’s New With Flu Audio Files Were Played: |
|
58 |
- 96 total media placements
- 198.8 million in reach
- $385,000 in total earned publicity
Press Coverage
- Flu broke records for deaths, illnesses in 2017-2018, new CDC numbers show
- New Alexa skill from Seattle and Boston children’s hospitals takes on flu season
Conclusions
- Skill enablement is a barrier to engagement. Many users don’t know how to go enable a skill within their Alexa app.
- Whatever you prompt users to do first within your skill will typically have the most engagement.
- Partnering with AAP, NFID, CDC, and WA DOH added a layer of endorsement, trust, and reliability.
- Having a shared skill sit in 1 developer console presented challenges (access to metrics, etc.).
