The man behind the Alexa Skills

Voice control via Alexa is becoming increasingly popular and is already part of everyday life for many customers, sales partners and employees - especially for Nicolas Konnerth. At ERGO, he is responsible for the development of Alexa Skills and tells us about his daily work and the challenges it poses for the company.

Dear Nicolas, you have a really exciting job at ERGO. What exactly are your tasks?

I give ERGO a voice: With the march through of language assistants we see a completely new cus-tomer interface, which is still under development. As "Head of Voice", I am allowed to help shape this exciting development for ERGO right from the start and ensure that we can take up a relevant position there.

How'd you get your job?

I was previously project manager in "Innovation Management" and was part of a great team in Ber-lin for half a year. Like in a tinkerer's workshop, the right people with the right skills were brought together there. All this time we had maximum confidence and were allowed to freely design lan-guage assistance solutions for ERGO. Only the rough framework for action was set and otherwise we as a team made all the decisions ourselves. And it has paid off: we have developed ten solutions and the realization that this trend will continue. One result was therefore that we will continue the topic as a sustainable line organization.

What do you like most about your job?

The novelty and dynamism in the development of the trend: we can watch a trend growing here. Within a very short time, there are always new developments and we are not only at the forefront, but can also proactively shape this development.

What challenges have you already faced?

Everything that has to do with language assistants is often directly related to the cloud. In this re-spect, we must always be very sensitive when it comes to data processing and take this into ac-count from the outset in our solutions. In addition, we always coordinate closely with our colleagues from the areas of IT architecture, data protection, law and many other colleagues in the Group.

What do you do when you're not working?

I keep myself fit with boxing - it's a great sport where you can learn a lot, especially about yourself. A good boxer is not characterized by how fast or hard his punches are, let alone how impermeable his defense is, but solely by maintaining composure in difficult situations.

Thank you very much for this interview!