The past few years have seen the world irrevocably change. The meteoric rise of artificial intelligence and meticulously-designed user-friendly apps has transformed the landscape of countless industries, slashing overheads and increasing efficiency in broad sweeps which have left few services unscathed.
So what does this mean for concierge firms and lifestyle management services? The crossing of this particular rubicon was perhaps always inevitable, and it’s not difficult to see the appeal of such digital replacements within the mass market. After all, apps excel at performing straightforward and repeatable tasks, offering solutions (of sorts) in a matter of milliseconds at a fraction of the cost of a trained and experienced professional. Portable, always accessible, interconnected and capable of tapping into a worldwide supernetwork of raw data… for many, many tasks and many, many people, they often check the boxes that need to be checked.
However, it’s important – if not absolutely vital – to continue to remember that the UHNW are most definitively not the mass market, with the sector positioned and distinct in ways even the most sophisticated AI-enabled mobile app is still a long way from being able to satisfy. As UHNW service professionals, we have a responsibility to our clients, to ourselves and to our industry as a whole to recognize these distinctions, and to remain aware of the services, skills and thoroughly human capabilities that cannot be replicated.
The human touch
Let’s tackle the most obvious point first, and not least because everything else that differentiates professional concierge and lifestyle management services from a digital app hangs upon this very concept.
UHNW clients value relationships with their service providers, some of which span years, decades and even generations. There’s a simple yet profound reason for this: they’re built upon a notion of trust and mutual respect, and a recognition of the unique demands, expectations and requirements of each UHNW individual or family. Successful concierges and lifestyle management staff understand this implicitly; the role requires a deep understanding of the importance of personalization and the value of tailoring an utterly bespoke approach to anything and everything the client might require.
AI-powered apps are, admittedly, getting a lot better at imitating a client-provider relationship, but imitation is as far as it will ever go. An app cannot take pride in its work, it cannot truly care about outcomes or client satisfaction. This, perhaps more than anything else in today’s list, is and should be remembered as the crux of what separates man from machine.
The utmost in exclusive access
Concierge apps and similar digital tools have long since been able to book tables at restaurants across the globe, arrange travel itineraries or reserve tickets to all manner of events – it’s little more than a matter of automating processes that were, for the most part, previously just a click of a button away.
Concierge service provision for the UHNW isn’t about accessing the accessible, however. Networks of trusted confidants, fellow professionals and globe-spanning peers take years and years to develop – it’s always been the cornerstone of an industry once again built upon trust and mutual understanding. An AI cannot have a convincing conversation with a fully-booked three-starred restaurant to negotiate a coveted seat at the chef’s table, nor can it curate a bespoke travel itinerary requiring the coordination of entire crews of experts.
The role of a concierge and a lifestyle manager within the realm of the UHNW is to anticipate roadblocks before they arise, and to facilitate complex requests through communication, persuasion and insight. While apps and tools have very much become part of a professional toolkit, they’re essentially a time-saving device for tasks within easy reach, and not a means by which to attain the seemingly impossible.
The power of human judgment
As anybody working within the concierge or lifestyle management industry will tell you, things don’t always go as planned. Daily logistics, multifaceted projects and complex issues all have to be managed with the seamlessness and discretion UHNW clients expect as a baseline requirement, and this calls for a level of professionalism and expertise that couldn’t – and shouldn’t – be left to a machine incapable of comprehending the notion of accountability.
Handling unexpected changes to schedules and mitigating issues is central to the role, and it’s something that requires experience not only of potential solutions, get-arounds and who is best in your coterie to contact, but also of the expectations of your clientele. This all requires judgment and sensitivity, as well as knowledge of what has and hasn’t worked in the past.
A matter of trust
As mentioned, digital concierge and lifestyle apps often do a fine job of covering many of the basic requirements of mass audiences, but UHNW individuals move in worlds which require the absolute utmost in trust and discretion. Every year, there are news stories of devastating leaks, cybercrimes and other nefarious goings-on in the murky realm of digital data collection – is it any wonder that some tasks are considered best left to a tight circle of proven professionals?
Trust and discretion will always be central to UHNW services, as clients are (quite rightly) more aware than ever before of the various pitfalls that exist within the world of anonymous digital tools. What’s more, the most successful concierges, lifestyle managers and firms that handle the personal and social needs and requirements of UHNW individuals don’t spring up from nowhere – they depend upon an effective ecosystem of word-of-mouth recommendations and proven reliability.
Consistency in a changing world
Concierge and lifestyle management services exist upon a fundamental premise: to go beyond mere problem solving to actively enhance the day-to-day living of UHNW individuals and their families, and to free up their most valuable asset of all: their time.
Time will tell how far digital apps and automated, AI-driven services will encroach upon, affect or potentially improve the concierge landscape. However, it’s hard to imagine a future where the world’s elite will put their faith solely into non-human solutions, especially while the personalized touch and bespoke nature of human-led services continues to supersede the robotic, the impersonal and the inflexible in almost every conceivable metric.
