How to Use Amazon Alexa to Compliment Your Dad this Father’s Day

Look, we’re not saying that your dad wouldn’t love yet another pair of black socks or a novelty tie, but, if you’re looking for ways to make this Father’s Day a little more special, Amazon’s Alexa may just be your new best friend (like she wasn’t already, right?).

So, how can this smart assistant assist you even more? Well, you can get Alexa to pay your dad compliments all Father’s Day. Of course, you can do this yourself. But, when it comes from somewhere unexpected, and your dad realises you took the time to teach your tech all about his coolness, he’ll likely count that moment as one of his favourite Father’s Day gifts.

How Alexa can compliment your dad

So, you want to know how you can enlist Alexa’s help in making your dad’s special day even more special? No problem, we’ve got the answer right here.

You may have heard of Blueprints. If not, Blueprints is an Amazon portal that lets users edit and create Alexa’s skills. And, to make life even easier, Amazon releases templates to help personalise these skills. Do you see where we’re going with this?

Yep, you guessed it. Amazon has a skill blueprint called World’s Best Dad, which essentially offers a list of compliments that Alexa can give to your dad. And, as we mentioned, you can customise these to suit your very own dad’s idiosyncrasies and bad fashion sense.

And, since we’re full of great news today, here’s another point that demands an exclamation mark. Personalising these compliments is easier than finding a Father’s Day card with a picture of golf clubs on it!

How to programme Father’s Day compliments into Alexa

Ok, so, you love the thought of bringing Alexa into your Father’s Day plans like she’s a mysterious special agent entering the plot of a blockbuster thriller. Great! Now what?

Fortunately, programming Alexa’s Father’s Day compliments is simpler than the gift toiletry set on offer at your local service station the night before Father’s Day.

If you’re yet to use Amazon Alexa Skill Blueprints, here’s how you can customise the World’s Best Dad skill blueprint:

1.      Get the World’s Best Dad skill blueprint

Navigate to Skill Blueprints and find the World’s Best Dad blueprint (we linked to it above). Hit ‘Make Your Own’, which will let you customise your own compliments.

2.      Keep the standard compliments or create your own

Now, if you’re about as gifted with words as a puppy trying to work out who the good boy actually is, you might want to leave the compliments as they are. And, there’s nothing wrong with that. They’re great and range from the sentimental – like ‘You’re a role model, and an inspiration’ – to the mildly cheeky – like ‘Well done dad! Your kids are awesome’.

But, if you want to make the compliments fit your dad better than that hideous jumper he wears, you can add your own compliments, edit the ones already there, or just delete them all and start from scratch.

3.      Customise the Experience

Next, you can customise Alexa’s greeting and farewell messages. So, when you open the skill, Alexa will get straight into the compliments faster than a nervous teenager on a date with someone way out of their league. And, similarly, the farewell message will give your dad a send-off better than the crew of an airline who swoon over you as you disembark (if a little more sincere).

You can also customise the background image that will display if you’re using this skill on Echo Show. So, that’s cool.

4.      Name the skill

Here’s where you enter the phrase that you’ll use to unlock the skill. You can leave it as World’s Best Dad, which, let’s face, is solid. So, solid, in fact, that you could build a skyscraper on top of it and it wouldn’t budge in a hurricane. But, if you have a cheekier relationship with your dad, you can call this skill anything you like. We don’t judge.

5.      Come back to edit it, if you want

You know when someone says something and you can’t think of a witty comeback, and then you think of something amazing at 3 am. Well, if you have a similar situation with the customised compliments, that’s not problem. You can come back any time and edit them or add more.

6.      Share your compliments

Your compliments may be aimed at your dad, but he’s not the only one you can share them with. In fact, you can share your compliments with all your friends and family, who can use them on their own Alexa-enabled devices!

Ideas for personalised compliments

So, you know that situation we were talking about where you’re haunted by the fact that you couldn’t think of anything awesome… which is guaranteed to happen before a monumental moment in your life that would really benefit from a good night’s sleep? Yeah, to save you from that, we thought we’d help get your creative juices flowing. So, here are some ideas for coming up with things for Alexa to tell your dad:

1.      Bad dad jokes

The only major criteria for a dad joke are that it has to be less funny than a financial newspaper headline and older than the dusty box of VHS tapes in your garage. Think Chuck Norris era and before. But, hey, oldies are goodies… which isn’t a bad line to have Alexa tell your dad!

2.      Puns

We’re separating puns from bad jokes just because, when you mix the two, bad things happen to good people. It’s like putting two angry, sweet-frantic toddlers in a playpen and leaving just a single toy in there. Guy Ritchie couldn’t write the violence that ensues.

If you need some inspiration, MenKind’s product descriptions are littered with puns that are cornier than a Kansas farm. You’re welcome.

3.      Sentimentality

If you’re not feeling the bad jokes and puns, you can’t go wrong with a bit of honesty. Tell your dad exactly how much you love him, how much you look up to him and admire him, how you want to be like him, or how you think he’s done an amazing job raising you. Or, for a tear-jerking moment that could make the end of a Hugh Grant film feel as emotional as a newsreader, do all of the above!

4.      Sentimentality disguised as satire

If you don’t want to give your dad the satisfaction of seeing you get all soppy, but you don’t really want to rip him to shreds, try something in between. Here are a couple to get you started:

• You’re so cool that you could stop the polar ice caps melting just by spending an afternoon in the north pole.
• You’re so good-looking that all the mirrors in the house wish they could always look like that.

Since we’re talking about personalisation, consider personalised gifts

Programming Alexa to compliment your dad this Father’s Day is sure to make the day special. That’s the power of customisation. Knowing someone has dedicated the time and effort to creating something just for you… well, that lets you know they really care about you.

So, if you want to make customisation a theme this Father’s Day, keep it going with personalised gifts. These are gifts that you can personalise, adding things like your dad’s name or a special message.

For some fantastic personalised gifting options, check out MenKind’s personalised Father’s Day gifts range!