Limited rollout for now
Today, Starbucks Ais that it is hopping on the voice assistant bandwagon with the introduction of a virtual barista in its mobile ordering app.
The Seattle-based coffee giant is now letting peoples and companies to place orders for food and beverage items by issuing voice commands in a manner similar to services such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant and Apple’s Siri. The feature appears in the form of a chatbot and uses an AI framework to process incoming orders in the form of a text messaging interface. Customers have the option of either speaking or typing their orders into the input field, and receiving instant confirmation and delivery times in the conversation window.
In addition to adding a voice assistant to its own mobile app, the company has also introduced a “Starbucks Reorder Skill” for Amazon Alexa that allows customers to re-order their usual items with the command, “Alexa, order my Starbucks.” This requires being logged into an existing customer account and having the Starbucks apps installed on a mobile device.
Starbucks says that its new assistant will initially be available to just a thousand beta testers in the US during the first quarter of 2017, after which it will gradually roll out to more customers over the summer and eventually makes its way onto Android in the later part of the year.
