Planning for a relaxing holiday? Choosing a relaxing holiday destination, booking flight tickets, planning the transportation, booking a fabulous hotel suite, and providing information on places to visit — you can get all this done through concierge services. Scope of concierge services extend beyond the hospitality or travel industry, concierge services also include booking parcel service and transportation service, doing online research, and recommending restaurants, gifts, and spas.
Concierge service is one of the oldest occupations of the human race. The earliest concierge services appeared during the Middle Ages where the job involved handing over the keys to all the rooms of the castle. In the 1900s as European castles became hotels, concierges expanded into hotels, hospitals, cruises ships, luxury car companies, and more. The explosion of mobile technology in the 21st Century paved the way for new forms of concierge services. Concierge services are commonly used by high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) at luxury hotels.
AI Concierge is an emerging trend that helps businesses improve their cost margins and scalability of their services. Bringing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology into concierge services can help bring down the cost and make the service available to common people also. The image below shows how AI Concierges make the concierge lifestyle available to all and not just HNWIs.
AI Concierge Services
Artificial technology for concierges expands its scope beyond hospitality and travel. Given below are some of the uses cases of concierge services by industry.
Sales
- Handle all travel and lodging
- Build out extremely customizable sales funnels
- 24/7 lead generation
Internet Marketing
- Editing and uploading video
- Manage and respond to social media 24/7
- Transcribe video to blogs and tweets
Small business owners
- Managing and paying vendors
- Handle courier and delivery logistics
Entrepreneurs
- Arrange meetings with investors
- Help in securing funding through targeted email pitching
Investors
- Follow up LinkedIn Contacts
- AI-based event planning
- Gift, restaurant, and event recommendations
- Finding and delivering rare items
Surprised? Yes, concierges powered by AI are capable of providing a myriad of assistive services outside hospitality and travel. Concierges may now seem to be the “go-to” for almost all types of tasks. Well not exactly. There are some situations where using a concierge may not be a good idea. A concierge is great at providing general information, but not a source of expert information. Depending on a concierge for legal or medical advice is not the right way to use its services. Certain in-person tasks like attending to an injured guest in a hotel or solving a complex customer inquiry cannot be done by a virtual concierge.
Concierge medicine is another use case of concierges. A medical concierge, also known as boutique medicine, is a concierge service where a customer pays upfront for personalized care and better access to physicians. This concept is a profitable proposition for doctors and patients, as the doctors need to manage only a fixed number of patients to make their ends meet and the patients get the benefit of timely, tailored AI Concierge service. Concierge medicine has become popular over the past 5 to 10 years. According to a survey conducted by Concierge Medicine Today, 20% of the patients cited long wait times as the reason for moving to concierge medicine.
Lifestyle management is another use case for concierges where the customer outsources his personal, daily tasks to concierges. These concierge brands use their expertise and business network to save time and provide exclusive service to the client.
Several hotels are using virtual concierge services for better customer engagement on social media. In May 2009, Hyatt hotels introduced their Twitter Concierge service to customers to answer their queries and help them find parks nearby or send gifts to friends.
How AI adds value to Concierge Services?
The concierge services industry is no exception to the disruption of artificial intelligence technology. Driven by customer expectations for enhanced digital connectivity, fast-paced lifestyles, instant gratification, and smartphones permeating every facet of our lives the concierge industry is forced to embrace technology to connect with the millennial customer. Concierge service providers need to embrace this technological momentum to differentiate their brand and provide better customer experience through tailored AI concierge service.
AI Concierge services bring in personalization into the service. Data-driven concierge services provide tailor-made recommendations to the customer. Natural language technology combined with AI enables concierges to predict what customers will like based on requests completed by similar profiles. An advanced data aggregator roped into concierge services enables accurate predictions of customer behavior and provide faster, personalized and expert recommendations from anywhere, at any time.
Other technological trends set to redefine concierge services are Geo-targeting and advanced location services, IoT and blockchain, connected devices and smart-home assistants, and machine learning.
Personal or lifestyle concierge services can be made more efficient through AI. AI Concierge services are much faster in attending to customer requests. They can also provide tailor-made recommendations that save time and effort for the customer who is always hard-pressed for time. The usage of personal concierge services is very simple, all you need to do is send a text and your personal concierge is at your service.
The Road Ahead for AI Concierge
Business looking to provide efficient, personalized, and fast concierge services need to boost their core service strategy with AI technology. Forbes predicts an entirely new trend in the concierge market — customer service concierge services. As per this trend, customers can outsource their complaints and service needs to a third party. Pioneering companies like Winimy AI are leading the way for AI-based solutions across diverse industries. From touch and voice-enabled Concierge to Wayfinding, Winimy has empowered businesses with the power of AI. The Mall-Wayfinding solution from Winimy is a voice-based AI solution that helps you navigate through malls. We have tailor-made solutions for any type of business. To know more reach out to us at versa@winimy.com.
Credit: BecomingHuman By: Winimy AI
