Alexa+ has landed on UK soil, and while customers eagerly wait to try the AI-powered virtual assistant, it’s a great opportunity to look back.
Since the service launched in the United States last spring, major changes have already been seen as customers navigate a new world of intelligent assistance and agentic AI. Now, with the service coming to the UK, a lot of naturalization work has also been done to help Alexa+ navigate our regional accents, idioms and culture, right down to understanding some of our favorite snacks.
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Rausch says the first results were achieved behind the scenes. “Engagement with Alexa+ is two to three times higher than with the original Alexa,” he explains, quietly confident as he discusses the journey so far. “Even things I didn’t think could grow, like music, which increases 25% in streaming time when a customer turns on Alexa+.
“It’s just more enjoyable… It’s not like customers have 25% more time!” he adds, while also keen to point out that the overall increase in engagement owes a lot to some of the exciting new features facilitated by a smarter, faster Alexa. “In the US, I use it to book a rideshare, or we’ll book a table to have lunch together. It’s all of that that elevates that level of engagement.”
Of course, everything is never rosy, and certainly not with an early access program. Rausch nevertheless views these lessons positively. “I’ve never shipped a product that was so easy to report a bug,” he jokes, reflecting on what I imagine was a rocky first year of service. “You can just tell Alexa what feedback you have, and that helps us understand that there’s a benefit to sanding somewhere.”
One example of note was the new Alexa+ voice and cadence. “Some customers — it’s a minority of them — don’t like the new voices,” Rausch says. So now Amazon offers a wider range of voices, and when Alexa+ comes along, it gives you the option to change its settings.
Naturally, concerns may remain about always-on devices when it comes to privacy and security, but with 10 years of UK service under their belt in addition to their years of US coverage, Rausch seems confident in Amazon’s approach. “Customers benefit from the same degree of transparency and control [with Alexa+]…it turns out that if you create products with transparency and control, you generally comply with all regulations and legal requirements.
Customers who are already familiar with Alexa’s Privacy Hub will be happy to know that the service, with all its features, remains the same for Alexa+. “You can see everything Alexa has heard, you can delete things… you can control all your data settings around the workout. It’s all in one place and that applies to the Alexa service as a whole.”
While all US Prime customers with compatible devices can now sign up for Alexa+ (or pay a $19.99 standalone subscription), for now the free beta program in the UK is limited to the Amazon Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11, Echo Dot Max, and Echo Studio. If you already have one at home, you can sign up now to receive an early access invitation.
It will likely take about the same amount of time for Alexa+ to fully launch in the UK as it would in the US, around a year. Over this period we’ll see the service come to a wide range of Alexa-enabled devices, including your Fire TV, and it will soon be available in a web browser at alexa.co.uk.
