Digital Concierge Is Paving the Way for Contactless Experiences

No longer restricted to the hospitality industry, AR-based digital concierge services hold the key to helping retail, office, healthcare, educational, and other facilities offer helpful, contactless support to building tenants and visitors. Here’s how.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to take a toll on the world, consumers are understandably worried about the risk of infection whenever they enter a building, whether to shop at a retail outlet, work in an office, or visit a doctor. 

Many building owners and facilities managers are trying to address these concerns by quickly adopting contactless technologies for everything from payments and merchandising to appointment booking and indoor navigation. But there’s one piece of technology in particular that could pave the way for an all-around experience in the post-COVID era: digital concierge services. 

The idea of the concierge, of course, comes from the hotel industry, where a human concierge is hired to help guests with any requests they might have, such as making dinner reservations, ordering theater tickets, or, in at least one case, building igloos for a guest’s penguinOpens a new window . Today, concierges have expanded beyond hotels, with many apartment complexes hiring concierges to support their tenants and some wealthy people relying on personal concierges to manage their errands. 

But due to the COVID-19 pandemic and consumers’ desires for contactless experiences, digital versions of the concierge are about to find their way into buildings everywhere, across the retail, office, hospitality, healthcare, education, and other industries. Let’s explore some of the ways that digital concierge services can benefit consumers and building owners in a contactless, COVID-safe manner. 

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But First, What Is a Digital Concierge? 

A digital concierge is any technology system that uses computers to fill the role of traditional (read: human) concierges. They are expected to be friendly (or at least “user-friendly”) and personable in much the same way that a hotel concierge would be, while helping guests and visitors with all of the same types of requests, and maybe more. 

Digital concierges sometimes come in the form of kiosks that many hotels, retail centers, healthcare facilities, and other types of buildings have set up in their reception areas, but the next generation of digital concierges rely on mobile apps to put a personal concierge in the pocket of every visitor.  

The advantage that digital concierges have over their human counterparts, other than the ability to “clone” themselves and provide one-to-one service for every person, is the layer of intelligence that they bring to every visitor interaction. A digital concierge can not only maintain a complete historical record of a user’s behaviors and preferences, but it can also tap into data from across multiple sources to provide the best answer to any question and deliver the exact right information at the exact right time. 

What’s more, as smart building technologies proliferate and our physical spaces start merging with the digital world, the number of use cases for digital concierges will continue to expand. So, what are some of the most popular use cases available today? 

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Check-In

Hotels, office buildings, healthcare facilities, restaurants, and many other types of buildings often require visitors to check-in or register when they arrive at a front desk or reception area — a task that can easily be handled completely contact-free by an app-based digital concierge. By simply checking in on their app, visitors can completely bypass the front desk and be granted access to wherever they need to go safely and securely. 

Indoor Navigation 

For large or confusing buildings and complexes such as shopping malls, office buildings, airports, and hospitals, indoor navigation solutions, also known as wayfinding, often use tracking technologies such as GPS and beacons in connection with a user’s smartphone to help them get where they’re going. The user simply tells the concierge where it wants to go, then uses his or her smartphone to receive turn-by-turn directions from place to place. 

Along the way, the digital concierge can use its contextual awareness of the building to transmit information about points of interest such as exhibits, storefronts, or nearby products. In office buildings, an indoor navigation app can be connected to a calendaring system to provide directions to a specific meeting room, while in hospitals, indoor navigation systems have proven to help patients get to their appointments on time and decrease the 10 – 20 percent average tardy rate. 

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Information and Recommendations

Like their human counterparts, a digital concierge is expected to be able to answer any questions a visitor might have while making personalized, on-point recommendations. Of course, digital concierges have the edge over humans because they can instantly tap into any number of databases to find their answers. 

Digital concierges that are powered by augmented reality can even let people aim their smartphones at a product or point of interest that they have questions about and get relevant information such as demo videos, pricing, specifications, and other complementary details. 

Customer Service

When something is broken or in need of repair—say, when an elevator gets stuck, or a bathroom runs out of toilet paper—a person can simply pull up their digital concierge and fill out a customer service request. 

The app can let them upload a picture of the broken item and channel it to the right person to fix it. And if the building has been upgraded with digital twin technology, the picture alone can automatically tell the technician exactly where in the building to direct their attention. 

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Revenue Opportunities

Because digital concierges have both situational awareness and an understanding of a user’s preferences, they’re able to combine the two to make intelligent recommendations for relevant selling, cross-selling and upselling opportunities that help drive incremental revenue. For example, a digital concierge at a hotel may be able to inform whether a certain property welcomes pets in the affirmative. It can also recommend a “pampered pets” package for an additional fee. 

In the retail environment, the digital concierge can surface targeted promotions to consumers as they navigate across stores, based on their location at any given time and their personal preferences. Moreover, by integrating online consumer analytics data, the digital concierge connects online and offline customer journeys and can provide targeted, personalized recommendations. 

Conclusion

As technology capabilities have expanded over the last few years, digital concierge services have grown rapidly — not just for hotels but among a variety of businesses and building types. They are quickly becoming important tools to help building owners and facilities managers provide better value to their tenants and visitors. 

They are enabling helpful, informative, and brand-positive experiences at every step of their journey. But most importantly, digital concierge services can do all of this completely safe and contactless, making them the perfect solution in the age of the coronavirus and COVID-19. 

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