What Is an In-App Digital Concierge and Should My Business Have One?

What Is an In-App Digital Concierge and Should My Business Have One?

When you hear the term concierge, do you think of a luxurious vacation? For me, it conjures the image of a helpful hotel employee who has the answers to all my questions, like:

• Can I book a snorkeling tour for tomorrow morning?
• What’s the best coffee shop nearby?
• Can I rent a bike to get there?

The traditional hospitality concierge is like a personal assistant determined to help you have the best possible vacation.

But this type of high-touch customer relationship management shouldn’t just be for vacations on Maui. Every industry can benefit from offering personalized, immediate service dedicated to answering customers’ questions and ensuring they have a positive experience.

Today, a lot of customer engagement happens in digital spaces—60% of brands report that investing in digital customer engagement helped them meet changing customer needs. Accordingly, the role of a concierge has to evolve to engage customers on digital channels. That’s where the digital concierge comes in.

This post explains what a digital concierge is, what it can do, and how it can benefit your business and customers. Let’s get to it.

What is an in-app digital concierge?

A digital concierge is a program that customers can use to ask questions or make requests from a business. This allows businesses to nurture customer relationships and build loyalty. Digital concierges often use a combination of AI-powered chatbots and live agents to address customers’ inquiries and needs.

While a digital concierge can engage customers on various channels, an in-app version within your business’ mobile app typically allows customers to communicate via live chat. You can even offer additional options like phone calls for customers who need immediate assistance from a live agent.

What can a digital concierge do?

A digital concierge can help businesses in customer-centric industries—such as hospitality, retail, software as a service, banking, and healthcare—connect customers to the resources they need. It can do anything a traditional concierge can and then some.

Some of the tasks a digital concierge can do include:

• Assist a customer throughout the buying process, such as answering questions about sizing, availability, and product specifications.
• Make tailored product or service recommendations based on the customer’s past purchases and behaviors or the information the customer provides throughout the conversation.
• Answer questions about your products or services and troubleshoot issues.
• Provide order updates and tracking information.
• Process returns or exchanges.
• Help customers find a doctor or healthcare provider.
• Make appointments or reservations.
• Route customers to the right live agent to address their needs.

Benefits of a digital concierge

Are you wondering whether your business should implement an in-app digital concierge? Let’s look at the top benefits to help you decide.

High-touch relationship management

Building relationships with customers is vital for businesses as it fosters customer retention. But this can be hard to achieve when the only way for a customer to connect with a business is to call customer service or fill out a form online.

A digital concierge allows businesses to nurture customer relationships with immediate, high-touch service. This goes a long way in driving customer loyalty, which contributes to business growth.

Personalized service

A digital concierge service enables better personalization because agents don’t have to ask multiple questions to understand the customers’ preferences. With a dashboard that integrates customer data from multiple sources and channels, digital concierge agents (whether a chatbot or a live agent) get quick access to the customer’s data and the context of previous interactions.

This data access allows for hyper-personalized service and recommendations, which are good for business—57% of consumers admit to spending more with brands that personalize experiences.

Additionally, digital concierge interactions also allow businesses to gather first-party data, benefiting businesses and customers alike—two-thirds of consumers want brands to only use first-party data to personalize engagement. Plus, 89% of brands report that using first-party data for marketing improves customer experience.

Increased customer satisfaction

A digital concierge provides customers with quick responses, typically solving their issues more efficiently than if they had to call customer service and wait on hold. This is crucial because, according to customers, a fast response time is the number one attribute of a good customer experience.

One way businesses can achieve this speed is by using tools like chatbots, intelligent routing, and integrated dashboards to lighten the load for agents and give them straightforward access to customer data. Plus, these time-saving tools allow agents to spend more time solving customers’ complex issues.

Lastly, digital concierge tools also facilitate data-driven customer service, another hallmark of a good customer experience. Ultimately, all this leads to increased customer satisfaction—for example, digital banking app Chime saw a 12% increase in customer satisfaction scores after implementing a digital concierge solution using Twilio.

Build a digital concierge that delights customers with Twilio Flex

Now that you understand what a digital concierge can do for your business and your customers, how do you implement one? Twilio Flex’s digital concierge solution has you covered.

With Flex, you don't have to replace your current systems or start from scratch to build a digital concierge. That’s because Flex:

• Integrates with your tech stack, customer relationship management software, and systems of record to help you create personalized experiences for every customer.
• Enables intelligent routing and omnichannel engagement, allowing you to connect the customer to the right agent in their preferred platform.
• Offers insights into customer interactions and key performance indicator tracking.
• Has customizable dashboards you can tailor to your business needs.

Want to learn more about what you can build with Flex? Discover how app-based healthcare service Concilio used Flex to build a healthcare concierge where agents can connect users to the care they need.

Then, read about how you can transform customer interactions with Flex digital concierge and contact sales to get started.