Uberall partners with Amazon Alexa to keep biz data up-to-date

When you’re asking a question that starts with “Hey, Alexa…,” a response of “Hm, I’m not sure about that,” isn’t great. And the wrong information is even worse.

Uberall, a customer-experience solutions provider, is working to make sure that doesn’t happen to retail businesses. Yesterday, it announced a partnership with Amazon Alexa to optimize the data that brick-and-mortar locations make available for voice searches, including addresses, hours of operation, inventory that’s available, and even where the nearest EV charging station is.

• Its 400+ retail partners include Staples, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Marks & Spencer, and it’s rolling out the service to its full client base, Uberall CEO and co-founder Florian Hübner told Retail Brew.

“Every retailer needs to work on [it] to serve you correctly online, make it worth your while and a memorable experience,” he said.

Presence of mind: The SaaS platform, founded in 2013 and made up of 400+ employees, manages the online presence for companies, from Google and Facebook, to Uber and Waze.

• In June 2021, Uberall raised $115 million, valuing it at ~$500 million; it also acquired Los Angeles-based location-marketing company MomentFeed.

“All these services have different ideas of how data should be structured and how it can be ingested,” Hübner said. “It’s our goal to make it really easy for business owners and operators and marketing departments to navigate this complex space.”

With so many channels to keep up-to-date, voice recognition can get lost in the shuffle, he noted. But it may be a worthwhile channel to focus on: Per eMarketer, ~40% of the US population uses voice search, and Amazon accounted for two-thirds of these devices sold between 2017 and 2021 in the US.

• For complex data, like inventory, stores often opt for updating their “most exciting” items, like the latest Nike drop, Hübner said.

+1: Some consumers have very specific needs, so Hübner noted that keeping many different data points up-to-date can also help businesses get a high ranking when someone asks a question like, “Where is the next Italian restaurant where I can get a gluten-free pizza that has wi-fi?”—EC