Personal service, don’t you love it, wherever you can find it. We’ve certainly seen the disappearance of personal service in so many ways. We often pray to hear a real human voice during a customer service call. So to contemplate a service where someone is at your beck and call is very appealing (Mom unfortunately got you used to that).
More often than not, today it’s more like you don’t have time to handle a certain task, or don’t have knowledge about a task and don’t have anywhere or anyone to turn to for help and advice?
For example, when you call the Ristorante Tosca and beg for a reservation at lunch, do they laugh at you silently? Maybe an out of town friend calls and says he wants to get together with you and you are asked to get a table at Café Milano Thursday night since he’s heard about it from colleagues etc.(good luck). Does he think you are on a V.I.P. list somewhere? Remember the time that you belatedly remembered your anniversary gift and dinner obligation at the last minute in your car as you drove home - by Jeeves, what to do? It might be that you have a luxury purchase task on your hands, but you don’t know one luxury brand from another?
We are describing here some of the varied rationale for one of this country's fastest growing businesses: the personal, luxury and corporate concierge.
Webster's dictionary defines concierge (pronunciation: kon-'syerzh, kän-se-'erzh) as a French word meaning "gatekeeper" or "keeper of the keys". The term "concierge" first appeared in France in the Middle Ages. The concierge's responsibilities then were diverse, including overseeing the administration of domestic services and performing special tasks at the request of the royal court. A concierge’s job was to see to the needs of VIP visitors as well as to hold the keys to the many castle rooms. The definition broadened with the rise of the grand European hotels in the 16th and 17th centuries, though it was not until the mid-20th century that the concierge became a must-have feature of North American hotels, residences and office buildings.
The "key" remains a symbol of the concierge profession to this day.
The National Concierge Association (NCA) defines the title of concierge as an individual whose principal occupational responsibility is to facilitate, or to arrange for the facilitation, of any request placed by a client, visitor, guest or tenant, providing the request is legal, ethical and appropriate for the concierge to do: thus "a doer of all things" within legal and moral limitations.
Modern times
Carrying the position forward into modern times a multilayer development has occurred within the profession. The first layer, we encounter is the personal concierge service level which has sprung out of a lack of personal time and bandwidth. There was a time when Americans took pride in doing things for themselves, but that was before ''I'm swamped'' became a national mantra. The services that a personal concierge provides can vary widely. Some pick up your laundry, walk your dog or wait for the cable guy. Others don't show up in person but can arrange hotel, restaurant and airline reservations, schedule business meetings and plan special events like corporate outings or weddings and get that birthday or Mother’s day gift sent off to Mom.
Hotels throughout the world have long known that having a concierge service on site lends value as an amenity to hotel guests. Like a hotel concierge, the personal version makes life easier, more efficient and more exhilarating for clients. Nowadays, though, personal concierges are more and more invisible, yet are taking on many new tasks. The advent of the Internet has allowed concierges to capture the resources necessary to offer services worldwide. Unconceivable things can happen through top notch concierges, like the ability to arrange for celebrities to show up at your cocktail party, or get you a flight in a jet fighter or even land you a bit part on a prime-time TV show like ''CSI: Miami.'' Yeah, baby!
If you don’t have a membership in a local personal concierge service, you may have concierges that come with your credit card (American Express Platinum), or your office lease, or your Vertu cell phone or even with your OnStar service in your vehicle. In recent years concierge services can be found in Class A Office Towers, retail settings, and in residential, civic, entertainment, academic and medical properties.
Luxury and wealth
In the past, wealthy people typically inherited their wealth and grew up being surrounded by luxury brands. They had well-connected family and friends to help them navigate through high society. Now-a-days the nouveau riche are less likely to have inherited these experiences, taste development and networks. There is a second level of concierge services that fills this void and provides entry into the luxury world, as well as guidance and advice.
Once the wealthy begin to use a luxury concierge service, they tend to use it for everything; it becomes addictive. They use concierge services for the finer details or for services they normally wouldn’t have access to. What hasn’t lessened over time is the need for insider information, a skill set and knowledge base that is hard to come by.
The economic downturn has not stopped the world’s wealthiest from spending, but it has made them focus more on value. And as the market gets more crowded with luxury brands, products and services, the rich are increasingly turning to specialized concierge companies for information, recommendations and what they hope will be better deals, because of concierge partnerships with luxury suppliers the world over.
One company of note on this luxury level, that transformed the idea of concierge services into “lifestyle management,” is named appropriately, Quintessentially, founded in London in 2000. It has offices in 44 cities around the world. Quintessentially, which employs about 800 people, plans to open six additional offices by the end of the year, in places like Portugal, Ghana, India and Indonesia. Its clients include business executives, politicians and professional athletes, as well as celebrities like Elle Macpherson, Mick Jagger, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and the band Coldplay.
Corporate
In today's business world, the owners of concierge companies have gravitated to targeting corporations, which offered many more service opportunities. Instead of marketing their services to individual consumers, they now have companies paying the fees and retainers. Companies then promote these services to their customers and employees gaining loyalty from both.
To a corporate employee, concierge services become a benefit of employment. In a tight labor market, the corporate concierge is one more benefit, along with signing bonuses and stock options, which in turn becomes a device to recruit and retain employees. Texas Instruments, for example, hired a concierge service because it wanted to have the most competitive benefits program in the semiconductor industry at that time. There are claims that employee productivity increases as household and common errands are solved and absenteeism diminishes.
Local DC successes
And interesting Washington DC business story is a concierge service that has grown far beyond its humble beginnings:VIPdesk. The company was formed in 1997; the founder, Mary Naylor, was already a veteran of the field. She started her first company, Capitol Concierge here in DC, in 1987.
Capitol Concierge was based largely on the traditional hotel model, placing concierges in lobbies of office buildings in the Washington area and dealing mostly with consumers face to face. After 10 years, with concierges in 80 office buildings, Ms. Naylor decided to create VIPdesk to offer a national enterprise model to customers like Citibank and MasterCard, using a central call center as service platform. In 1999, she improved on this model with an eye toward lowering overhead and reducing turnover. She raised $12 million for the new technology that allowed her corporate-serving concierges to telecommute and work from home.
VIPdesk receives 40,000 requests each month and does more than $20 million in revenue. The biggest customer is OnStar, whose Luxury and Leisure option costs $69.95 a month for unlimited access to a concierge (remember the homeward bound spouse late on the anniversary task!).
VIPdesk specializes in delivering virtual call center solutions and concierge services to luxury and premium brand leaders in several industries including retail, travel, auto and financial services. It serves more than 70 blue-chip clients with over 10 million customers and has broken new ground for this business sector.
Meanwhile in 2007, Naylor’s Capitol Concierge, Inc., the nation's largest concierge service provider for commercial office properties, upscale apartments and condominiums, shopping malls, private corporations and individuals was purchased by Lynda Ellis. Since then, the company has continued to flourish -- it now employs over 350 concierges who service more than 100,000 people. As mentioned the company is based in Washington, DC, but is now providing service reaching from Richmond, VA to Wilmington, DE, and continually expanding.
If you are interested, two local personal concierge services in our area are Potomac Concierge in Potomac MD and JCL Services in Alexandria Va.
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