She can’t clean your home (at least not yet), but now she can help you get it cleaned. Amazon Alexa’s newest skill comes from Handy, and allows folks to book a cleaning simply by chatting with Alexa. That marks the first time that the Amazon Echo has made it possible for its users to book a cleaning service using nothing more than their voice. And with Handy’s more than 600,000 customers, you can bet that Alexa will be getting plenty of requests for some tidying up.
“With the world moving toward a smarter home and technology now performing many of our daily tasks for us, we are excited to be the first and only cleaning app integrated with the Amazon Echo,” said Handy’s CEO and co-founder, Oisin Hanrahan. “We aim to make people’s lives as easy as possible and with the ability to order our services by voice, we are freeing up time that would be spent searching for domestic chores further down the line; just one sentence and it is all in hand.”
To use the new Alexa Skill, users need only say, “Ask Handy, when is my next booking?” or “Ask Handy to schedule a booking” to their Amazon Echo. From there, Handy (by way of Alexa), can chat with users to confirm a time, date, and location, and even take care of payment online via the credit card associated with the Handy account.
Already, Handy is available in 28 cities across 15 states and three countries, and has facilitated over 2.5 million bookings. “It was a natural extension for us to be integrated with The Amazon Echo as the app itself is already designed to give people more time to do the things they enjoy,” Hanrahan added. “We want the experience and process to be as simple, seamless, and effortless as possible and that’s why this integration is hugely significant to us and our customers.”
