Voice commerce solution for Samsung’s Bixby assistant – how does it work?

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Voice is opening entirely new doors for eCommerce. The growing popularity of voice assistants, like Bixby, makes it possible to buy products by simply talking to your smart speaker. Here’s how it could work with our voice commerce solution.  

The presented voice solution is developed by Divante and Upside Lab. It had its premiere at Samsung Developers Conference 2019

Voice solution for Samsung’s Bixby assistant

The initial idea is based on the combination of Bixby’s capabilities, Vue Storefront (an eCommerce PWA) and any eCommerce backend (we built a demo version on the Magento eCommerce platform). 

With this combination, Bixby users can begin the purchase path with a simple voice command.

In the demo of this powerful voice commerce solution for Bixby, we focused on doing daily grocery shopping. Let’s take a look at a possible purchase path with Bixby! 

Hey, Bixby “Add milk to my shopping list”

Usually, we gather our shopping list throughout the whole weekend and then we collect our goods in the local store. Whenever you have a Bixby-enabled device next to you, you can start an interaction by asking Bixby to order for you, let’s say milk

Bixby assistant

With the interaction “Add milk to my shopping list” we get the result:

Bixby, before showing your product list

In this possible scenario, Bixby, before showing your product list, will ask you from which store you would like to order, for example, based on your location. 

Thanks to our integration, Bixby takes the keyword “Milk” and gets information from the backend. With this short sentence, your clients will have the ability to create shopping lists straight from Bixby. What’s great about this is the fact that with one, seemingly simple feature —a shopping list— you can start building long-term engagement with your customers. There’s no need for them to manually create the list or be constrained to their mobile. With Bixby, they can interact with your brand wherever and whenever they want.

Thanks to Bixby’s learning preferences, the system can learn and suggest products for your future purchases. It can help to deliver highly personalized results to the user. Over time, Bixby learns more about purchasing patterns, location, and availability. It can then suggest items based on the day of the week, for example, or depending on where the customer is located. More personalization means more relevant content for the customer.

Bixby as an eCommerce frontend

Imagine Bixby as a new frontend for your customers, a new interface you provide them with to accommodate for the moments they were previously left out, e.g. while driving a car or while working out at the gym. Bixby fits where mobile and web can’t. It perfectly fits the habits and lifestyle of the modern customer who wants to operate within a united system ( not being restrained by devices or applications) and to have the ability to execute their requests on-demand. What’s more, by integrating your brand, we have more information about the client and their needs, so we can provide them with more personalized content. So, for example, it won’t recommend ham to a vegan and it will make clients’ decisions even faster.

By saying “Hi Bixby, get my favorite items” we can see that Bixby understands which products we would like to have and adds them to our shopping list.

Checkout with Bixby

Checkout with Bixby

Let’s assume the shopping list of our client is done. You can now review it via voice or mobile “Ask to show my list” and then finalize the order “Place an order”. The user can also manage his order via Web or his dedicated PWA. You can quickly check out in Bixby by using Samsung Payment Service (SPS) or third party payment gateways.

Samsung Payment Service (SPS)

We just went through the major customer flow but there are many other great features we can offer to customers as well to facilitate their lives and make interaction with the brand easier and more pleasant. Your customer can, e.g., order predefined lists of items “Ask to order my usual groceries” or they can display promotions too “Ask to show my latest deals”.

The combined power of voice and mobile

For us, the most powerful think about voice is that we’re not replacing mobile and web, the known and working interfaces for many, but we’re enhancing them with a new kind of interaction. It is safe to assume that we’re approaching the times of omnipresent e-commerce platforms and Bixby, with the Samsung ecosystem of devices, offers just this. Imagine asking your washing machine to order washing liquid, or telling your fridge to make sure you have enough snacks for the weekend’s birthday party. Technology is serving our needs more precisely and more naturally than ever.

Worldwide trends show a huge interest in conversational commerce and voice purchasing so it’s a good moment to start embarking on your brand’s journey into multimodal commerce.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

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Published November 19, 2019