With a beta launch to 1000 iOS customers nationwide, Starbucks announced today the rollout of a voice command intelligent assistant integrated into Starbucks mobile app for iOS. At the same time, the company is launching a Starbucks Reorder Skill on the Amazon Alexa platform.

Previously announced at the company’s annual investor conference, the conversational ordering system, My Starbucks Barista, allows customers to place their orders via voice command or messaging interface. The natural language intelligent assistant is intended to enhance customer loyalty “making sure that Starbucks voice ordering within our app is truly personal,” said Gerri Martin-Flickinger, chief technology officer for Starbucks, in the announcement.

My Starbucks Barista joins a growing list of large enterprises and brands using intelligent assistants in mobile apps including Geico’s Kate and Dominos’ Dom, a mobile virtual assistant based on work the company had been doing with Nuance Communications.

The Starbucks Reorder Skill, which allows customers to order Starbucks food and beverage items, is available at the Alexa Skills Marketplace. In order to use the ordering assistant, customers need to have an Amazon Mobile Order and Pay account and say “Alexa, tell Starbucks to start my usual order.”

Amazon Alexa has received a fair amount of attention lately with a number of products showcased at this year’s CES that have integrated with Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service.

As brands like Starbucks continue to rollout smart user interfaces — and consumers increasingly interact with devices by voice — there remain a number of UX challenges for these conversational intelligent assistants. At the upcoming Intelligent Assistants Conference London (May 4-5), Dave Isbitski, chief evangelist for Amazon Alexa & Echo, will speak to these challenges and discuss what opportunities exist for enterprises to provide conversational support across intelligent assistant platforms.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: Amazon, intelligent Assistants, Alexa, Starbucks