Definitions:
Traditional Concierge Services (Hospitality)
Concierge services in the hospitality industry have a rich tradition of being primarily provided by upscale, luxury hotels catering to wealthy clients such as high-net-worth individuals, executives, VIPs, and celebrities. The core idea of the classic concierge service involves a seasoned assistant who organises and oversees tasks for a busy patron, delivering exceptional personal care, a human touch, professionalism, and convenience.
AI Concierge
An AI Concierge can be defined as a technologically advanced, intelligent and personalised assistant, inspired by the traditional concierge concept. It is designed to cater to a customer’s psychological, emotional, and physical needs throughout their service journey, employing proactive measures to enhance their experience (Li et al., 2022; Sumner and Quinn, 2017).
Key Attributes of AI Concierges
An advanced AI Concierge:
exhibits a sophisticated semantic understanding of auditory and visual inputs
An AI Concierge with enhanced semantic comprehension can effectively manage various linguistic styles and address language mistakes. Furthermore, sophisticated AI concierges exhibit the ability to interpret a wide range of auditory and visual inputs, including voice commands, scanned texts, uploaded photos, facial expressions, and environmental details captured through scanning technologies.
These functionalities lead to the provision of distinctive outcomes derived from a nuanced interpretation of the inputs.
establishes and sustains an emotional connection with the customer fostering customer-AI concierge rapport
Following the progression of semantic comprehension, the next evolutionary leap for AI concierge systems involves establishing an emotional connection that bridges the divide between AI concierges and traditional concierge services (Robinson et al., 2020; Nica et al., 2022).
This progress allows AI Concierge to analyse not just the literal message content, but also to comprehend the underlying emotions by examining the tone and word choice in a customer's query.
Recent work has identified unique ways in which automated services can develop emotional connections with customers, such as through processing data to provide customers with recommendations that cater to their preferences (Leino Calleja et al., 2023; Yalcin et al., 2022).
By weaving emotional abilities into their fabric, AI Concierges can foster a bond with customers that is vital for delivering genuinely personalised and impactful concierge services (cf. Borghi et al., 2023; Huang and Rust, 2021).
demonstrates proactivity in fine-tuning the customer journey by anticipating and addressing customer needs without explicitly being prompted
By utilising advanced computer vision technology, an AI Concierge is not just passively waiting for customer prompts, but is able to actively predict their needs.
Combining historical data, behavioural patterns, and predictive analytics, proactive AI
concierges can suggest actions, offer insights, and automate routine tasks without explicit
customer commands (Bornet et al., 2021; Sharma et al., 2021).
For example, by analysing a customer’s attire and factoring in their known preferences, an AI concierge could recommend entertainment choices that align with the customer’s context and mood. Similarly, they can detect potential hazards in real time and promptly warn customers. This evolution from a responsive service to a proactive, anticipatory concierge not only heightens customers’ convenience but also underscores the AI’s potential as an intuitive ally in the customer journey from end to end.
displays omnipresence where the AI concierge is always present and attends to a wide range of tasks across the customer journey
The omnipresence exhibited in AI Concierge services entails adapting to customers' needs at different stages of their service journey, while ensuring a consistent presence throughout. This continuity not only creates a sense of familiarity, convenience, and trust but also contributes to heightened customer satisfaction. For instance, an AI Concierge could guide a customer from booking to their entire hotel stay through personalised interactions such as virtual avatars for booking, voice dialogue for directions, physical robots for luggage assistance, and holographic projections for check-in/out processes and inquiries within the hotel.
All AI Concierge interfaces, which include dialog interfaces and tangible service robots, encompass the four attributes mentioned above. Nevertheless, the level of integration and focus may differ, spanning from low to high degrees for each attribute.
Note: the article is based on the information presented in Journal of Service Management, March 2024, in the research paper titled 'AI concierge in the customer journey: what is it and how can it add value to the customer?'
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