Smart assistants and smart speakers and displays can prove to be extremely useful for those who have them. You can use them to control the lights, answer the door, secure your home and many other tasks. Virtual assistants seem to be gaining new capabilities every day, especially if they are powered by Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
Although these smart assistants don't have the ability to communicate with us, we do know that people enjoy practicing their manners and asking them questions. Android Central staff often say "Please" or "Thank You" when asking their assistants to perform an action or answer a question. This got us curious about how many people practice good manners with their assistants.
Smart assistants can say "Please", but "Thank you" takes more effort. Virtual assistants usually stop listening to additional commands once they have completed an action. This means that the "Thank You” can be overlooked.
There are many ways to make this change for the top smart speakers.
The feature is called Continued conversation with Google Assistant. This feature allows your smart speaker's microphone to remain on for a few seconds following a command in order to listen for any follow-up commands. This allows you to use the time to thank your device by saying "Thank You". It will then respond with "I'm here for help" or "You are the best." You are my favorite person."
You can enable this feature from your phone by going to Settings > Google > Settings For Google Apps > Search, Assistant Voice & Google Assistant > Continued conversation. You can toggle the feature on from there and it will work with all smart speakers, including the Nest Hub Max.
Amazon Alexa has a similar feature called "Follow-up Mode". It does the exact same thing. Open the Alexa app, and then navigate to the Devices tab. Next, locate the device for which you want to enable Follow-Up Mode. You'll need to activate the feature for each device.
Siri does not seem to have this feature. However, you can tap on the Siri animation on the phone to have Siri listen for a new question. Siri does not seem to respond to politeness which is disappointing.
Bixby is unable to carry on a conversation without being asked. Bixby will respond if you say "Thanks!"
While it might not seem like a huge deal to some, it could be a great way to teach our children how to be polite to computers. It's possible that we can keep the robot rebellion at bay by practicing polite manners with virtual assistants.
