McDonald's Canada launch conversational commerce on Google Assistant
Wednesday, 10 April 2019 02:19.PM
- McDonald's Canada is first Quick Service Restaurant in Canada to launch nationwide on Google Assistant-powered smart speakers and smartphones.
LivePerson, Inc., a leading provider of conversational commerce solutions, is powering a new conversational service for McDonald's Canada that is now available to all Google Assistant-powered smartphone and smart speaker users in Canada. This new offering, the McDonald's Action on Google Assistant — the first for any Quick Service Restaurant brand in Canada — offers a simple and convenient way to learn about the latest special offers.
McDonald's customers will benefit from a number of useful features, including:
- Location-aware special offers, by entering their province or allowing Google to locate them automatically, if preferred.
- Hands-free browsing of those offers, via voice commands using Google Home.
- A multimodal experience across Google Home devices and smartphones, with a choice of both visual and voice controls to fit the user's needs at any given moment.
After invoking the Google Assistant action, users will be given four to six of the latest offers from McDonald's — visually on a smartphone or read aloud on a speaker-only system. On smartphones, they can tap any offer to jump directly to the My McD's app and place an order. Voice-only users will be verbally prompted to download the app. The service also offers an option to get the latest McDonald's offers at the beginning of each week, via push notifications to their Google Assistant app.
"As a leader in the quick-service industry, we know that technology is a critical driver of success. We are excited to offer our guests this new, modern, and convenient way to connect with us," said Lara Skripitsky, Chief Technology Officer at McDonald's Canada. "We are always looking at innovating ways technology can make the experience for our guests even better, and this conversational experience on Google Assistant-enabled smartphones and smart speakers is a great way to do that."
"McDonald's is legendary as a leader in creating great customer experiences and an innovator in using technology to make the guest experience even better," says Tony Chen, VP of Product for LivePerson. "We're thrilled to be powering this conversational commerce offering for McDonald's Canada and think that this approach — working across voice assistants, smart speakers and smartphones — points the way to an amazing future where people can communicate with brands much more easily."
In a short time, consumers have adopted smart speaker technology — such as Google Home, one of the devices that the action runs on — to where it is now present in millions of homes. This puts the impetus on brands to offer a multimodal approach, where conversational experiences span both visual and voice interfaces.
By blending the strong points of each mode of communication, consumers can choose the way that best suits them at any given moment: the convenience of voice commands in the kitchen where people often want a hands-free interface and, in other rooms or situations, the addition of rich visuals of a screen — ideal for browsing and confirming food options.
The service is available immediately to all customers in Canada who use the Google Assistant service. For more information, see the Google Assistant website.
For McDonald's Canada, this newest innovation is part of the journey to evolve its digital offering for its millions of daily guests, which now includes McDelivery, McCafe Mobile Rewards, My McD's App, and Mobile Offers. And it comes on the heels of the brands launch of Snapplications
To bring this project to life, McDonald's Canada and LivePerson worked with global media agency OMD on strategic development and marketing communications agency Cossette on user experience and execution.