Response to Week Discussion 7

Amazon’s Alexa is one of the competitive voice assistant product in the market. It is capable of different voices and providing personalized responses (Sharda et al., 2020, p. 673). It comes with standard capabilities such as setting alarms, playing music, controlling smart home appliances, analyzing shopping cart, making phone calls and text messages and many more. In addition to the standard (native) abilities, people can use Alexa apps to download custom-made capabilities which is also referred to as Alexa Skills (Sharda et al., 2020, p. 674). Starbucks has collaborated with Amazon to in developing this Skill so that users can order drinks from Starbucks with the voice instruction given to Alexa. To activate this feature, it is required to enable the “Starbucks Reorder” skill using Alexa app. It is required to authenticate the Starbucks account to integrate between these two systems. One of the requirements is that the initial order cannot be placed through Alexa. Once the order is placed using Starbucks app, Alexa can reorder the item. In terms of mechanism behind this integration between Starbucks and Alexa, most of the heavy lifting is done in Starbucks system while Alexa is only instructing to order user’s last order. One of the reasons why Alexa has minimal functionality is to avoid the complications that user may go through. The skill is somewhat limited at the moment: you can only order a designated Usual drink by instructing Alexa to “tell Starbucks to start my usual order," rather than ordering off the menu or changing up your routine (Liptak, 2017). It has provided convenience to the customers as they are able to place their regular orders easily using the voice assistant without having to wait in the line.

References

Liptak, A. (2017). You can now get Amazon's Alexa to order your usual drink at Starbucks.