I sat down with Louise, the Moshi Project Manager responsible for getting the Amazon Alexa Skill approved, to ask her some questions about the process of building the Moshi Skill:

As the Project Manager for creating the Alexa Skill, what were your team’s biggest challenges?

The biggest challenge in developing an Alexa skill was that it was all new for us.  We had created a simple skill a few years ago but the technology and process had all changed.  We were learning as we were developing/testing how different building a voice user interface (VUI) was from a visual app. 

Did you think the Skill would take as long as it did when you first started?

We didn’t expect it to take as long as it did but the Alexa certification process is very thorough and the first couple of rejections gave us valuable feedback on building a better user experience.  Unfortunately, we often had to wait 2-3 weeks for the feedback and this drew out how long the process was taking.   

Did hearing the customer’s pleas for the Alexa skill give you more determination?

Yes!  It was really frustrating to see the reviews and comments from customers wanting Moshi on Alexa and knowing that we were really trying to get it approved. Furthermore, we had been quite confident earlier in the fall of 2021 that the skill was weeks away from approval, which we unintentionally communicated to a handful of users, not realizing how much longer it might take.

How did you feel when the Skill was not approved?

We were feeling so many things but mostly frustrated and dejected. Once all the technical issues were resolved, we had to ask for an exception in allowing our skill to include account linking, as we are considered a child-directed skill. This was really important to be able to let our users link their accounts and to have access to the entire Moshi content catalog.  We worked closely with the Amazon business development team in getting over this last hurdle.  They were incredibly helpful in getting us timely feedback so we could address any concerns that were raised.

How did you and the team feel the day it was approved?

We were really excited and didn’t quite believe that we finally made it!  We have so many ideas on what we can do next and we can’t wait to hear back from our users on what they think of Alexa. 

Bexy

Moshi's Head of Customer Experience & Community Operations. It's been a pleasure working for Moshi since 2011. I'm a Mom to two children, both with additional needs. I am passionate about learning more about children's struggles and hope to be able to share my experiences/learnings with others.