Best Buy Pushes Shopping by Voice; Experience Comes Up Short

Best Buy pushed online ordering interactions via Alexa in a Thursday email to customers. Though the email referenced Alexa only, the “learn how” link took customers to a page with both Alexa and Google Home instructions for communicating with the retailer's e-commerce site from a smart speaker. It differentiated instructions for the two, saying Google Assistant uses “actions” to find information and Alexa uses “skills.” It instructed users to click “explore” on the Assistant app to search for the Best Buy action. An optional second step is to complete the linking process in the app by signing into your Best Buy account, required for order tracking. The third step is to say, “Hey, Google. Talk to Best Buy.” It gave examples of commands to “buy headphones from Best Buy,” ask for store hours; ask about Total Tech Support; and request order status. For Alexa users, in addition to asking about order tracking and Total Tech support, it said to ask Alexa about voice-only deals and to research products. We communicated with both Google Assistant and Alexa. Cadences remain a problem, we found. Sony noise-canceling headphones in black came across as “Sony black-noise canceling headphones” in Google Assistant-speak. We had to get the trigger phrase just right. We asked Alexa, “What are the Best Buy deals?” and she responded: “It looks like Amazon doesn’t sell Best Buy.” When we said, “ask Best Buy about voice-only deals,” she gave four offers. Google, too, required perfect syntax. Alexa gave us a mishmash of four product deals: a Garmin smartwatch ($199), a PhunkeeDuck self-balancing scooter ($299), a two-pack of Aluratek Bluetooth speakers ($20) and an Insignia NS-CAHBTEBNC-S noise-canceling headphone for $35. Alexa appeared to try to pronounce the headphones’ model number as a word, requiring yet another trip to the website: most pronunciations weren’t clear enough for us to understand what we were being offered.