1-800-Flowers Adds Samsung Bixby Support for Voice Ordering
- 1-800-Flowers.com becomes one of the first retailers to enable voice shopping using Bixby and Samsung Pay.
- The company is offering voice and chat-enable shopping across a varity of platforms including Amazon Alexa, Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger, Google Assistant, and Samsung Bixby.
- Orders can be processed through a number of payment options including Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay.
- The company is also using Apple’s ARKit to deliver augmented reality messages to loved ones.
1-800-Flowers.com announced yesterday that is now supports voice ordering using Samsung Bixby. This is notable for 1-800-Flowers.com because it is an early adopter in enabling voice shopping with existing solutions already in place for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. The announcement highlights Bixby integration as the first key message in a broader announcement about the company’s availability for ordering through multiple channels.
“Just in time for Valentine’s Day, 1-800-Flowers.com has become one of the first retailers to offer smart ordering capabilities from Samsung’s voice-powered digital assistant, Bixby. Shoppers can simply utter voice commands on Samsung-enabled devices (“Hi Bixby, I want to send flowers to my wife”). Bixby provides gift-givers with a truly frictionless transactional experience using Samsung Pay.”
This announcement is even more notable for Samsung. Bixby is still a relatively new voice assistant and received some negative consumer backlash when it first arrived in the Spring of 2017. In late 2018, Bixby 2.0 was introduced on the Galaxy Note 9 and it is getting a more favorable reception, but it still doesn’t have an open marketplace like Amazon Alexa and Google Assitant where anyone can introduce or find a new voice app. Any commitment by a leading retailer to the platform will surely be viewed as positive by both Samsung and its Galaxy device users.
A Clear Commitment to Conversational Commerce
While some people remain skeptical about the future of voice shopping and the ability of chatbots to drive sales, 1-800-Flowers.com is clearly all-in on all conversational channels. Integration with the leading voice assistants is complemented by updates to the company’s Facebook Messenger bot and text ordering using Apple Business Chat. Tom Hartnett, President, 1-800-Flowers.com commented:
As part of our ongoing mission to deliver smiles, we are continually focused on elevating the shopping experience, making it effortless, convenient and fun for our customers.
A key element of the convenience strategy is to be available wherever consumers prefer to interact. This has led the company to the leading conversational commerce platforms and even those like Bixby, which are still unproven. 1-800-Flowers.com is also likely to introduce many consumers to conversational commerce for the first time which may help spur awareness and interest in voice shopping as an option alongside mobile and online ordering.
Read the full announcement here.
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