• Survey of Rural Challenges
  • Small Town Speaker Becky McCray
  • Shop Local video
  • SaveYour.Town

Small Biz Survival

The small town and rural business resource

A row of small town shops
  • Front Page
  • Latest stories
  • About
  • Guided Tour
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • RSS

How independent retailers can trick Alexa, Siri, and Google Home to capture orders from local customers

By Becky McCray

Your customers are placing orders with voice assistants right now. They just aren’t ordering from you. Here’s what to do about that. Photo by Andres Urena on Unsplash

 

People are happily using smart voice assistants more than ever. You know their names: Alexa, Siri, Google, Cortana. It’s so easy (and fun!) to just say what you want, and your magical assistant orders it for you. Then it shows up at your doorstep, and you’re living in the future!

This isn’t great for small town and independent retailers. You just got cut out of the order process. Unless…

Unless we could find a way to get Alexa and friends to talk to your store. And it turns out there is. Here is the trick you need to know:

Your customers don’t ask Alexa to order. They ask her to send a message.

Alexa and Siri and the others will all send any message to anyone, as long as they have the necessary skills and contact info.

Here’s what that looks like. I’ll use Alexa in all these, but they could work with any of the voice assistants.

Send an email

  • You don’t want your customer to say “Alexa, order lemon soap” because that will always default to ordering through Amazon
  • You do want your customer to say “Alexa, email the The Copper Penny Store and say ‘Send me a bar of that lemon soap you know I love.”

Send a text

  • Bad: “Alexa, order a pepperoni pizza,” which will go to their paid partners
  • Good: “Alexa, text the Olive Pit Pizza Place and say ‘I want a large pepperoni delivered,'” which will go straight to the local store

Make a call

  • Good: “Alexa, call the Olive Pit Pizza.”
  • Good: “Alexa, call The Copper Penny Store.”

How to teach these new tricks to Alexa, Siri and friends

In order to make this work, your customers have to do a little setup work. Depending on how comfortable you are with the technical stuff, you can decide how much or how little you’ll help them.

If you have zero technical skills

Right now, some of your customers are early-adopter types. They not only have a voice assistant, but they use it all the time. They already know how to add a contact and send a message. You just have to prompt them with the idea that they can use it to reach you.

  • Easy to-do: add “Ask Alexa email us at ________ to place an order” to all your ads and social channels

If you have medium technical skills

If you have any Alexa enabled device, you can call out and receive calls from any other Alexa device. So you could actually set up an Echo Dot in your store. It would be like another phone line, of sorts. Then you just let customers know they can call you via Alexa. Here’s a CNBC article walking you through the voice-calling setup process. (Of course, the exact process will change over time.)

  • Medium to-do: get an Alexa device like an Echo Dot in your store and give out the contact info to customers who also have an Alexa-enabled device

If you have all the technical skillz

If you’re the technical sort and good at writing directions, then you can show customers how to do the setup, in an easy way. Even if you only know how to work with one of the assistants, then you can give instructions for that one. If you are super savvy with more than one, hey, go for it and write instructions for them all.

  • Difficult to-do: write a one-page cheatsheet to walk customers through the setup
  • Bonus round: set up a demo in your store and show customers how to do the setup

 

Testing, testing

Be sure you test your plan with your own voice assistant, then enlist friends and family to help you test. Once you’re sure you can do this, start inviting in your customers. Suddenly, you’re the coolest store in town.

“Siri, call the liquor store.” 

(Uh oh. Siri isn’t 21.)

New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.

  • About the Author
  • Latest by this Author
Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.

www.beckymccray.com
  • Will trendy axe throwing and escape room businesses last? More experience-based retail: the Hat Bar
  • Create customer experiences online like Open the Shop With Me videos, and in person, like Silent Book Club
  • How to let customers know when changing your business hours

January 29, 2018 Filed Under: Best of, entrepreneurship, marketing, rural, tech, tools Tagged With: retail

Wondering what is and is not allowed in the comments?
Or how to get a nifty photo beside your name?
Check our commenting policy.
Use your real name, not a business name.


Don't see the comment form?
Comments are automatically closed on older posts, but you can send me your comment via this contact form and I'll add it manually for you. Thanks!

Comments

  1. Becky McCray says

    January 31, 2018 at 12:13 pm

    Here’s a great article with photos walking you through setting up Alexa to send text messages via Android phones: How to send text message with Amazon Echo

    Loading...

Howdy!

Glad you dropped in to the rural and small town business blog, established in 2006.

We want you to feel at home, so please take our guided tour.

Meet our authors on the About page.

Have something to say? You can give us a holler on the contact form.

If you would like permission to re-use an article you've read here, please make a Reprint Request.

Want to search our past articles? Catch up with the latest stories? Browse through the categories? All the good stuff is on the Front Page.

Partners

We partner with campaigns and organizations that we think best benefit rural small businesses. Logo with "Shop Indie Local"Move Your Money, bank local, invest localMulticolor logo with text that says "Global Entrepreneurship Week"Save Your Town logotype

Best of Small Biz Survival

A few people shopping in an attractive retail store in refurbished downtown building.

TREND 2025: Retail’s Big Split: what small town retailers can do now

99% of the best things you can do for your town don’t require anyone’s permission

Three kids in a canoe

Get started as an outdoor outfitter without breaking the bank

A shopkeeper and a customer share a laugh in a small store packed full of interesting home wares.

How to get customers in the door of small town and rural retail stores

Rural Tourism Trend: electric vehicle chargers can drive visitors

Wide view of a prairie landscape with a walk-through gate in a fence

Tourism: Make the most of scant remains and “not much to see” sites with a look-through sign

More of the best of Small Biz Survival

Copyright © 2025 Becky McCray
Front Page · Log in
%d