Amazon lets select US customers shop with Alexa by text
Amazon is rolling out texting access to Alexa for Shopping, allowing a small group of invited U.S. customers to search for products, build carts, complete purchases and receive delivery updates through messages. The company says the option will expand to millions more customers over the coming weeks.
- Texting access starts with invited U.S. customers.
- Alexa for Shopping can search, compare, buy and track products.
- The service adds more than 100 shopping capabilities.
- Amazon plans to expand access to millions more customers.
- Conversations can continue across text, Amazon and Alexa devices.
Shopping through a text conversation
Customers who receive an invitation can accept Amazon’s terms, link their phone number and begin shopping through a contact that will appear as “Alexa Shopping” on their phone. They can send requests such as starting a weekly grocery order, finding a birthday gift, reordering an item or locating products similar to a photo.
Alexa for Shopping searches for products, compares options and replies with suggestions. When the customer is ready, it can add items to a cart and complete the purchase on their behalf. Amazon says customers can also ask it to track an item’s price, notify them about new releases, check an order or show up to a full year of price history.
More than 100 shopping capabilities
Amazon says Alexa for Shopping has gained more than 100 new capabilities. These include creating holiday gift lists, managing baby registries, tracking refunds, handling subscriptions and monitoring deals. Customers can also ask it to manage grocery lists, add ingredients from a recipe photo or find products from stores across the web through Shop Direct.
The assistant can remember preferences that customers share, such as wanting vegan or organic products, and use them in later recommendations. Amazon says it learns customers’ shopping habits and tastes over time. It can also monitor Amazon and the broader web for events such as a price drop or a new product release.
Requests can move between text, the Amazon Shopping app, Amazon.com and Alexa-enabled devices. Amazon says the service will remember what customers were working on and what they prefer, allowing an interaction started by text to continue elsewhere. Order updates, delivery notifications and deals will also appear in the same text thread.
A wider rollout for Amazon’s shopping agent
Texting with Alexa for Shopping starts with a small, invitation-only group of U.S. customers. People who have not received an invitation can sign up to get news and offers from Amazon by text and be among the first to know when more invitations are sent.
Amazon says more than 400 million customers have used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months. It also says the number of customers using its agentic features has grown more than eight times since the start of the year. The text option extends those features beyond the Amazon app and website, giving customers another way to delegate searches, comparisons, recurring purchases and price monitoring.
“Now with Alexa for Shopping, your personal shopping agent is just a text away,” Rajiv Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of Conversational Shopping, said in the company’s announcement.
