GrubHub Launches Alexa Skill For Quick Food Reordering

What Happened
Online food delivery service GrubHub has created an Amazon Alexa skill to allow users to quickly reorder a recent meal. After activating the skill, users can get food delivered simply by asking Alexa to “open Grubhub” or “tell Grubhub I’m hungry,” before choosing between their three most recent GrubHub orders for delivery. Once confirmed, Alexa will also tell users how long they will have to wait before the food shows up.

What Brands Need To Do
This is not the first food delivery skill that Alexa has added to its fast-growing list of capabilities. Both Pizza Hut and Starbucks have created their own Alexa skills for voice ordering. As tech giants such as Google and Amazon continue to make strong pushes for their conversational products, more and more mainstream consumers will soon become reachable via those emerging voice-based devices. Therefore, brands will need to explore opportunities in building advanced applications for these emerging platforms with highly engaging user experiences and conversational interactions.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building Alexa Skills and chatbots to reach consumers on conversational interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The “Miller Time” Alexa Skill we developed for Miller Lite is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational customer experience, supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data.

If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 


Source: The Verge

 

Is Google Preparing To Enter The Home Services Market?

Following Homejoy’s announcement that it is shutting down its service on Friday, Google confirmed that it is hiring around 20 members of Homejoy’s product and engineering team, signaling that it may be preparing to enter the local home service market. Earlier this year, Amazon officially launched “Amazon Home Services” to connect Amazon customers with home service professionals in local areas. As the local on-demand space continues to heat up, it makes sense to Google to enter the race.

Source: Re/code

How On-Demand Delivery Startup Postmates Is Getting Big Brands On Board

Read original story on: VentureBeat

Postmates, a 3-year-old on-demand delivery startup, has been slowly winning over major fast-food chains by proving it can drive demand and deliver on its promises. Merely weeks after striking an exclusive delivery deal with Chipotle, the Brooklyn-based startup has formally announced a similar deal with McDonald’s today, starting with a test program in New York City.

Although Postmates delivers orders to consumers with or without the consent of restaurants, these newly forged partnerships likely signal a future business model for Postmates where, with its open API, it can create a white-labeled local delivery network not just for take-outs, but all kinds of small parcels. By bringing more big-name brands into the on-demand economy, it might just upend the ecosystem of the food industry.

Why Ford Is Working On Its Own Version Of Uber

Read original story on: The Next Web

Ford CEO Mark Field revealed in a recent interview with BuzzFeed that the company has been developing its own ridesharing service named Dynamic Shuttle. Earlier this year at CES, Ford unveiled a series of experiments in developing the connected car, and this announcement marks Ford’s first entry into building its own platform. As on-demand ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft radically alter the landscape of personal transportation, it makes sense that a legacy auto manufacturer like Ford would be eager to acclimate to the ongoing market shift from car-ownership towards car-sharing.

Dynamic Shuttle

Image taken from Ford’s website

 

Verizon Entering Sharing Economy With Car-Sharing App

The sharing economy is undoubtedly on the rise, with its global revenue set to hit $335 billion by 2025. Now Verizon wants a piece of the growing market too. The telecom giant has announced its plan to launch, later this year, a mobile app to connect independent car owners and rental agencies with would-be drivers on the go. The rising popularity of on-demand car-sharing has led to the recent successes of ride sharing apps such as Lyft and Uber, but Verizon has bigger plans—it is said to be expanding the platform to other connected resources in the sharing network.

NASA To Send 3D Printers Into Space

NASA is reportedly planning to fly a 3D printer into space for the first time. This special 3D printer is made to function in a zero-gravity environment and, if successful, would enable astronauts on the space station to print out needed parts right onboard without waiting for the next resupply mission. Such on-demand capability could revolutionize the constrained space supply chain, further validating the legitimacy of 3D printing.