High Quality Customer Service in the Concierge Industry
A lot of phone-based concierge service providers have sprung up in the last few years, our company included, and the range in quality of the services provided is enormous.
We all want to promise the world to our client, but unfortunately very few of us actually reach that lofty goal of consistently exceeding clients’ quality expectations. As the average American becomes more and more skillful in finding information online, the concierge industry is finding itself in challenging, yet exciting, times.
Impressing a client with memorable concierge and personal assistance service now means getting the information they need and packaging it in a way they couldn’t do themselves. But how does one do that?
In our 5+ years of experience in the concierge industry, we have observed that the most fundamental building block of exceeding the client’s quality expectations is attention to detail. This concept of attention to detail practically has to become the service provider’s obsession and must be baked in from the beginning: from finding the right concierge phone reps to quality assurance, to the executive team’s long-term planning. Attention to detail can mean anything from giving alternate driving directions if a traffic accident is detected when helping a lost client find their way, to preventing use of dangling prepositions in email correspondence with the client.
The other pillar of exceeding customer service quality in concierge services is giving the client what they need, not only what they want. Because of the open-ended nature of concierge service, many times the customer is not quite sure exactly what they are looking for. They may be searching for a reputable auto-shop (to avoid getting ripped-off) to replace their tires but not realize (until we point out to them) that replacing tires is much less expensive at a national tire outlet (like NTB). Or if the client needs dinner reservations for their wedding anniversary and we suggest pre-ordering chilled champagne in a bucket of ice to be ready at the table when they arrive. It’s up to the concierge representative to think ahead and fill in the gaps that the client doesn’t yet know exist.
If these two ideas can be implemented successfully, exceeding your concierge clients’ quality expectations is almost guaranteed.
