Wondering where your Uber Eats order is? Alexa will soon be able to tell you. Amazon today announced a new camaraderie with Uber that will give Echo device owners the ability to track their Uber Eats orders through Amazon’s voice assistant. Starting later this month, Uber Eats users will be able to activate a new order tracking feature that will allow them to get updates through their Echo smart speaker, based on their preferences.
Amazon has had trouble getting users to adopt its third-party voice apps, known as Alexa Skills, like Echo users. Tends to wear your devices to basic taskslike setting timers, playing music, or controlling your smart home. The Uber integration could prompt Alexa device owners to try something new, as it would see Uber market the order tracking feature in its own app, helping drive adoption.
When the update goes live, riders will be able to turn on a new “Track with Alexa” option in the Uber Eats app’s Voice Assistant settings. Then, after paying with their food order, they can tap a new Alexa button to start tracking the order’s progress.
Uber Eats x Alexa
There are a couple of ways Echo owners can receive order tracking updates. They can choose the more traditional notification method that changes the Echo’s blue ring of light to yellow, to which customers can respond by saying “Alexa, what’s my notification?” This is similar to how Alexa users can check their Amazon delivery updates, for example.
The other option would allow Alexa to announce when there’s a change in order status for one or all of your home Echo devices. This way, the Uber Eats customer doesn’t have to keep checking their phone to see where their order is, as Alexa will announce when the food is ready, when it’s picked up for delivery, and when the driver has arrived at their home.
Alexa will also announce when something changes with the order, such as if it was canceled for some reason.
Uber worked closely with Amazon on how the feature should work. He decided to make the feature something the user has to enable on every order, rather than something they turn on at the account level. The latter, the company believed, could have risky drawbacks.
“For example, imagine a customer who placed an order for a sandwich, but forgot they had turned on hands-free notifications with Alexa. And now imagine they have a sleeping baby at home,” explained Ethan Hollinshead, Uber Eats product manager. in a blog post. “Or imagine a scenario where someone places an order on the go, only to have Alexa provide notifications to everyone back home.”
Instead, the new experience combines the convenience of optionally having Alexa notify you of updates, but without the troublesome drawbacks of an always-on integration. You can choose in each order if you want Alexa alerts.
The feature, which joins other Uber integrations with Google Assistant and Siri, is expected to reach US Uber Eats customers later this month.
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