Starbucks and Alexa

A new Skill for Alexa allows you to re-order your Starbucks order. This is great if you know your timing to get to your closest Starbucks but it stirs up some interesting points about effective voice experiences:

• Voice works great when it’s a one shot experience. If Starbucks had programmed an interactive voice response (IVR) type of experience, it would have been brutal. Instead, this Skill essentially becomes a Dash Button of coffee ordering.
• It condenses a bunch of steps into one. You’d have to find your phone, find the Starbucks app, launch it, potentially log in, then find the order button, etc. All this would keep your hands and eyes occupied. This is a much better experience.

What this Skill begs is for mobile voice ordering so people can actuate the ordering from work or on the go. Thankfully — Ubi App allows for this.

Ubi App allows you to access and interact with Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service (AVS). By pressing the button and speaking a command, you can talk to Alexa and receive back a response.