Amazon launches smart home ‘Experience Centres’

Amazon and American housing developer Lennar have partnered to offer customers an opportunity to trial the latest smart home innovations.

In these Alexa-enabled Experience Centre smart homes, customers can ask Alexa to control the television, lights, thermostat, window blinds, and more. Customers can also Trial Amazon Dash Buttons to reorder household essentials, listen or watch Prime content with Fire TV, and schedule on-demand home services through Amazon Home Services.

The Experience Centres are an effort by Amazon to showcase how customers can use Alexa in their everyday lives. The company already has a huge market share in the smart homes industry, with Amazon’s voice-activated Echo Dot taking the title of America’s most popular smart speaker, according to research by Thinknum.

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“We wanted customers to experience a real home environment that showcases the convenience of the Alexa smart home experience, great entertainment available with Prime, and Home Services,” said Nish Lathia, general manager, Amazon Services. “We are excited to extend our relationship with Lennar with the launch of Amazon Experience Centres. As one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, Lennar offers the potential to enable this experience within easy driving distance of millions of customers.”

 The Lennar model homes are set up by Amazon experts, employees who are specially trained on the latest technology and are passionate about helping customers. Customers who are impressed by the smart home offering can book a one-on-one session with an Amazon expert following their visit to the Experience Centres.

“Amazon’s ability to bring a home to life with Alexa smart home experiences, entertainment and services – coupled with their obsession with customer experience – is a natural extension of our Everything’s Included approach to homebuilding,” said David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures. “We picked Amazon because of our shared commitment to customers, their Amazon experts across the country, and their ability to connect customers with thousands of service providers through Amazon Home Services.

This is not Lennar’s first foray into smart home tech with Amazon. The homebuilders announced in 2017 their WiFi CERTIFIED houses, which feature integrated automation using Alexa, as part of Lennar’s Everything Included policy.

Amazon Experience Centers are now open in Lennar model homes in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC. There is no announcement as yet about bringing a similar service to the UK.