Amazon has partnered with Uberall, a hybrid customer experience solutions provider, to help brands and businesses connect with customers who have Amazon Alexa voice assistant devices. This new deal enables Uberall clients, such as Shell and KFC, to promote their brand to Alexa’s millions of users and drive foot traffic to their locations.
Leveraging Uberall CoreX — the company’s local customer experience platform that powers the entire customer journey from online discovery, to store visit, to recommendation and repeat purchase — Alexa will be able to recommend Uberall brand clients to users based on types of requests and questions.
Meanwhile, Uberall clients send their verified, cleansed data directly to Alexa, which will recommend their local goods and services and drive foot traffic. In addition to location information, this shared data includes contact information, hours of operation, descriptions, business categories, menus and services.
According to a news release, this aims to help brands promote their offering to Alexa’s millions of users who are usually searching with high buying intent in the local proximity.
“More and more, consumers are turning to devices like Alexa for answers to virtually anything, making voice search a fast-growing part of everyday life,” said Florian Hubner, Uberall CEO & founder, in the release. “And with businesses having to rapidly update or change prices, pandemic guidelines, hours of operation and more due to ever-changing world circumstances, it's important that Alexa users have the latest information.”
This partnership aims to increase the reach of Uberall businesses since Amazon has a dominant share of the U.S. market for smart speakers, accounting for roughly two thirds of devices sold from the summer of 2017 to 2021, according to the Uberall release. In addition, the company’s decision to invest in voice activation is largely due to changing consumer and household habits, as approximately 40% of the U.S. population use voice search features according to eMarketer.