Hello everyone and welcome to ZD Tech, ZDNet’s daily editorial podcast. My name is Clarisse Treillesand today I explain to you why the arrival of brands in Amazon’s voice assistant raises fears of biased responses for customers.
Tomorrow, will Alexa’s answers still be as relevant as they are today? The question is valid. Amazon, indeed, will soon boost Alexa responses with messages sponsored by the brands themselves.
This feature, called “Customers ask Alexa”, kicks in when questions posed to the voice assistant specifically target products or brands. Then, brands in these product categories will have the opportunity to respond directly.
Displayed expertise
Let’s take an example. A customer shopping for cleaning products on Amazon might ask their smart speaker, “How do I get pet hair off my carpet?” »
Until then, Alexa used information from the internet to answer questions. But soon, a brand will also be able to provide answers they find useful, as well as links to their Amazon storefront.
According to Amazon, the approach could not be more legitimate, because the brands are experts in their products. This feature kind of creates a live bridge between brands and customers.
Marketing argument
What’s more, these are not paid advertisements. Sellers can see questions and answer them in a dedicated platform, with self-service tools. And, to ensure at least the quality of the messages, Amazon specifies that no response will be broadcast without moderation.
Voice commerce is still in its infancy, but Amazon is betting big on it becoming a major commerce platform in the future.
But the future is not all rosy. It’s not unreasonable to expect sellers to compete for prominence in Alexa’s seller-provided response system. It’s also not unreasonable to expect sales pitches, even if disguised as very helpful answers, to overrun those answers.