If at the word “concierge” you imagined an old woman who, day and night, tirelessly guards the entrance to the entrance and vigilantly watches every incoming and outgoing person, get ready to forget about the usual association. The concierge agency has nothing to do with the grannies in the front.
So what does the word "concierge" mean in this context? In Western practice, a concierge is a person who is responsible for running personal errands for their boss or important guests, such as in a hotel. By the way, this activity has been going on for more than a dozen centuries.
To make it even clearer, just remember the movie "The Devil Wears PRADA", imagine yourself in the place of the main character, adjusted for the fact that you have not one boss, but hundreds of different people and companies with different requests. Do you feel that you would brilliantly cope with all the assignments? Are you sure that you would find an approach to any customer? Then a concierge agency as a business is definitely for you.
Business intricacies
The market for concierge services is quite narrow, and it is far from possible to open your own agency everywhere. The target audience is people and companies who find it easier to shell out a tidy sum for the fulfillment of their desire than to do everything themselves.
Therefore, you should focus primarily on wealthy people and large companies. If your city does not have either of them, it is better to look for another business idea. A concierge agency as a business is more suitable for a large city than for a small one.
Among the orders that come to concierge agencies, there are both quite standard requests (wash windows, find a nanny or housekeeper), and unusual ones.
Among the services provided by LIVA FAMILY are cleaning, selection of household staff, various household and business errands, services in the field of luxury real estate (sale, rent, purchase). There are also diverse requests that sometimes do not even occur to us. But people, nevertheless, need to solve them.
What range of services your agency will provide depends on two factors: the frequency of receipt of certain orders and your competence in certain matters. The latter is very important, since the quality of order fulfillment directly depends on it. Even if all the work will be done by your partners or contractors, they need to be controlled.
Working in concierge services requires a lot of composure and patience. It is not always possible to complete the assignment quickly. In our practice, there are orders that take years to complete.
The most important condition for working in this area is confidentiality.
How to start?
In principle, a business in the field of concierge services does not require any special highly specialized knowledge. You don't have to be an engineer or a sailor to fulfill requests. Communication skills are much more important for the head of a concierge agency.
In addition, to start a business, you need a well-formed and time-tested base of contacts, which will help at first, give you a certain confidence. I mean the contacts of those people who can help with the fulfillment of some request, recommend your agency.
Starting a concierge agency usually requires enough big investment. However, I had a certain hitch with the search for investments, and I decided to start working on my own resources. As a result, at first, about 100 thousand rubles were spent on the design of a legal entity, the creation of a website, business cards, telephone, business trips, and so on. In a word, it is quite possible to open a concierge agency with a small investment, the main thing is to have the right contacts, desire and faith in their work.
The biggest investment in such projects requires the creation of a call center that will receive and process requests, “bring” clients and conclude contracts. Accordingly, money is needed to create infrastructure, pay for the labor of many workers, and provide quality service.
But at first, you can do without a call center if you have a phone and a team of 3-4 like-minded people. With this baggage, you can already start fulfilling requests. Rendering standard services like window cleaning can be outsourced to subcontractors. Try to work with several companies, choose the most best options cooperation for you.
An interesting point in this case is pricing. We do not raise prices for standard requests. For example, for window cleaning, we charge the same price as the contracting company that will do the work. She just pays us a certain commission for transferring a client.
But with unique requests, everything is much more complicated. Here, the price has to be set independently based on the complexity of the task, the cost of time and resources.
While still studying at the MGIMO master's program, Yulia Lukoyanova decided to go to work in a concierge service. Starting as a night concierge, the girl gradually mastered the intricacies of working with important guests, gaining experience and making connections with the right people. A year ago, she opened her own concierge service, which, among other things, began to help expats settle in Moscow. Now Capital Concierge serves about 150 individuals and two dozen corporate clients.
Julia Lukoyanova director
and founder
Capital Concierge
I got the idea of a business when I was in graduate school. Since childhood, I had a craving for luxury and everything exclusive, which shocked my parents. Once I found in one of the glossy magazines an article about the concierge service in England, written on behalf of its founder. After reading the article, I realized that this is what I want to do, and wrote a letter to the company.
After the interview, I was hired by the Moscow branch as a night concierge. It was wildly romantic and complicated. When I first went to work, I received a request to urgently find a box of exclusive wine, which was brought to Moscow only on order, and in half an hour to deliver it to Vacation home client. Of course, we could not find the required wine, but we offered an alternative - the client was satisfied.
At some point, I realized that I had the strength and a great desire to do something of my own, and I founded my own concierge service. The technical director of our company and the financial director with whom we started together new business They knew me from my last job. The market for concierge services is very narrow, and everyone who works here has intersected in one way or another.
We currently have seven people working in our office. I looked for them through ads on HeadHunter. When selecting personnel, the first thing that is important to me is English. We place great demands on it, as we provide services all over the world. During a conversation with an applicant, it is important for me to understand the life position of a person, how honest he is, client-oriented. It is also important to know the key services of goods and services, brands and the city of Moscow itself. Mostly Muscovites work for us, and almost all employees know two foreign languages.
Friends and relatives helped to collect 3 million starting capital. I didn’t call or convince anyone, I just shared the idea with people close to me, they supported me - morally, financially and with contacts.
The money went to rent an office in the very center of Moscow - it is important for clients where we are. In addition, I had to spend money on the technical part. The telephone is our main instrument of work. We operate on the principle of a call center: we accept all requests by phone and e-mail. We did not skimp on this, because we understood that what better system rebuild, the better our company will work.
The website is also a large expense item, because the concierge service is a fashion business. The brighter you do something, the more chances you have to hook a client. Therefore, we have been making the website for more than six months, it should be launched soon.
The first clients appeared through personal contacts. My investor friends helped me a lot. Thanks to them, we have attracted two very large corporate clients. I cannot disclose their names, but I will say that we have three major contracts. We also serve about 20 small companies: we work with real estate agencies, private educational and medical institutions, expat communities. We do not have a strict club system - we work with each corporate client in a way that is convenient for him. We currently have about 150 individuals. There is already a system of subscriptions - for a year, three or six months.
Concierge services came to Russia around the beginning of the 2000s, and then there was a wow effect. Accordingly, the reaction of the people was not entirely adequate: clients called and asked to do something to see how far we could go. Per last years The client profile has changed a lot. But all the same, the client himself often cannot understand what he needs, does not fully describe the problem, and the task of the manager is to get to the bottom of the matter and offer what is needed.
One day the client asked to be transported the corpse of his dog, with whom on a journey trouble happened
FROM corporate clients also not easy. Basically they need the organization of events. We also accept individual orders from top managers, but they, as a rule, have their own staff of assistants, so they turn to us if there are only exclusive desires, for example, organizing an individual trip to Africa on a turnkey basis. To do this, you need to know the region and the right people there, develop a route and program, organize rental cars and real estate.
Orders are very different. For example, we were recently approached by a client who really wanted to watch a series released a few years ago in Canada, Good dog. He never went on TV, and it is generally unclear how the client found out about him. We only found the first season, but the client insisted that there was a second. We rummaged through the Internet, and it turned out that the second season was renamed and was not even filmed. We found both seasons, but it was impossible to download them. Our technician recorded video literally from the screen. As a result, we delivered the disc to the client - he was pleasantly surprised.
Another person, who is not yet our client, called and said: “I have global problem, my wife cannot have children from me, and we really want a child. Our first question was if he knew where he was calling - it turned out he knew perfectly well. Since our first visit is free of charge, we made a selection of various treatment options for him, indicated the amounts. But he hasn't shown up yet.
Recently we had to smuggle a girl from Russia to Ukraine. She called, said that she was standing in a terrible line to cross the Kerch Strait, where our government is ferrying military equipment. The girl asked for help to speed up the process. We contacted the head of the checkpoint, and he helped.
Another time we were asked by a client to transport the corpse of his pet. He was traveling with his dog, on the way she got in trouble. The client returned to Moscow, but then we transported the body of the dog so that he could bury it calmly at home.
So far, we have not had outstanding requirements. We immediately refuse to fulfill orders that are against the law. For example, ordering drugs, although now there are much fewer such orders than before.
Here real example from my previous company. At night, a girl called, already very cheerful. She demanded to call a prostitute girl for her at home, otherwise “her husband and all of us will come ***”. We very tactfully explained to her that we don’t do such things, but we can tell her a joke so that she doesn’t get bored, or we can advise a film.
Expats are exactly the people who need help the most. We have prepared an individual package of services, taking into account the interests of a person who came from another country: what he needs in the first month, six months later, a year later. We have formed it in such a way that at all stages the foreigner is comfortable and does not feel the abyss between Russia and the West.
Expats pay a lot of attention to details and want to know everything: why this and not that, but have we checked exactly? Some of them use our service to save money. First of all, such customers want to know how much it costs - milk, coffee, tea - and how much their cost differs from the prices at home. Therefore, price comparison is our first item on the list of services for expats. Foreigners want to be accompanied in furniture, grocery, clothing stores. In Russia, not all Internet resources are available, the sites are in English, so we also help with online translation. There are more complex services: recruiting staff or placing children in private schools.
The company's revenue this year should amount to almost 45 million rubles. Gross profit- about 14.5 million rubles.
We have an annual subscription for 85 thousand rubles. It includes information services, search for specialists, making an appointment with them, booking tables in establishments and taxis, delivering flowers, gifts, food and alcohol. The client pays for these services himself - the subscription covers only our labor costs, this is a kind of insurance in case he refuses the order.
Additional services may be subject to a separate service charge on our part, but this has almost no effect on the price for the client. We cooperate with regular suppliers - prices for us are lower than for people from the street.
For one-time orders without a subscription maximum size The service fee is 10% of the cost of goods or services. The higher the price, the lower our percentage. It may be absent altogether if the supplier gives a commission.
We also go to meet clients if they ask to help their friends. We do this to earn the loyalty of our current and potential clients.
We are interested in corporate cooperation and various forms of partnership. There is an idea in the future to gather 20-30 people and create a closed club with powerful personal assistants. But this must be done for customers and absolutely for other money.
At the same time, we expect a reduction in orders from expats: today, not every foreigner wants to go to work in Russia.
Photo: Semyon Katz
Recently I was connected to the concierge service. While I did not use it, because there seemed to be no need, but when I began to tell my friends about it, there was not a single one who knew what it was. Everyone asked the same question "What is it?".
We already know firsthand what a cleaning service is. This is when, instead of keeping a cleaning lady in the office, professional cleaners with equipment come there and clean the premises.
a little less people know what a catering service is. This is when office employees do not bring food from home, do not heat it up in the microwave and do not run to a nearby grocery or fast food, and a car with a hot lunch comes to them at lunchtime and feeds all the company's employees. This is beneficial both for employees who receive good meals and for company management, which does not have to think about how to provide food for employees or bother organizing their own kitchen.
And now we come to what concierge services are. They can be completely different, both for individuals and for organizations. Today we will touch on individuals.
I will not hide, I have already heard about one concierge service, to which clients of one big bank when opening an account. But to become a client of this concierge service, you need to deposit at least 2 million rubles in the bank. =)
It is clear that not everyone has that kind of money, so I perceived the concierge service as something elite, inaccessible to ordinary people.
But it turned out that there are much more affordable concierge services.
So what is a concierge service? In a very primitive way, this is a cross between a very super developed 09 and a personal assistant assistant.
That is, the concierge service will tell you everything: where there is the right medicine, when some organization is working, they will make an appointment for you, buy tickets for you, order pizza for you and much more.
Well, in order not to guess, I will now just reprint a list of what one of these IQ Service concierge services does, what they tell people there:
film review and screening times,
score of sports competitions,
food order,
reminders,
weather forecast,
traffic jams on your way,
ordering plane tickets and much more.
Example: You arrived in an unfamiliar city and want to have a bite to eat in some good, but not expensive restaurant, no more than 10 minutes walk, with Italian cuisine, where there would also be empty seats and a smoking room. And also, so that in an hour a taxi would arrive at the restaurant and take you to the station. Where you would have already booked tickets for the next train, in the compartment car, on the bottom shelf.
That's how many conditions we set! =)
Now you don't need to surf the Internet from your mobile phone, you don't need to ask passers-by, you don't need to download your local friends (if they are there at all). It is not necessary to rush about, thinking about what to grab onto and how to be in time. It is enough to call the concierge service, and they will immediately tell you where you need to go, call a taxi, book tickets (of course, if they are available, and if there are no tickets for the desired train, they will offer an alternative). And there are many such examples!
I will write some examples of very real requests made by people through this service:
Request:
A car wheel was punctured not far from 18 Ivana Franko Street. You need to find the nearest tire shop.
Solution:
The nearest tire shop is located 800 meters along Ivana Franko Street. Reported address, phone number and cost of tire fitting - 900 rubles.
Request:
The client needs to urgently get from Moscow to Nyagan. There are no direct flights for the requested date. The client reported on the option he found with a transplant. Asks if there is a better option.
Solution:
A more profitable route with 1 transfer was selected. The savings for the client amounted to more than 18,000 rubles. The tickets were booked and delivered.
Request:
The client wants to fly to Thailand on vacation for 1 week. He asks you to choose the cheapest option.
Solution:
With the help of our partner, an option was found for a trip to Thailand to the resort of Pattaya at the Fortuna 3 * hotel, breakfast, 7 nights for $ 399. Arranged booking and purchase.
That's what a concierge service is. Now know and don't say what you haven't heard!
By the way, on the site that I gave for the sample now there is a promotion - you can connect this service for free for one week, so that each of you can now try it.
Ideal assistants who can be entrusted with absolutely any business exist and are called concierge managers. These wizards work in agencies, and you can use their services day and night, being completely sure that everything will be done quickly and without any questions.
Service difference
Now the market offers us two types of concierge services: banking and lifestyle. They have one basis - the fulfillment of customer orders at any time of the day and anywhere in the world. But the principles of work are different. Lifestyle service is an affordable service provided for relatively little money. The Lifestyle Manager takes care of literally everything, from ordering coffee every morning to arranging a mortgage and arranging mushroom picking in the Austrian Alps. If you are a client of such a company, you need to warn about your movements and create a list of tasks, the managers take care of the rest.
Banking concierge service is a standardized service available to holders of Gold and Platinum premium cards. The list of services includes a more formal list of functions performed, which in a large company are the duties of a personal assistant to the CEO.
If the lifestyle service is widespread in the USA and Asia, then the banking concierge service is a priority for the CIS countries. In Europe, there are both types of services, but the scale is much more modest, people are more accustomed to the fact that instead of a client, his manager can come to the parent meeting.
Lifestyle service is a solution to everyday and general life issues, and banking service is a service aimed at saving the client's money and increasing his income.
Tickets, rental, delivery
Banks provide concierge services exclusively to VIP clients. Typically, the service is a bonus to the cardholder, and its price is included in the cost of servicing payment cards.
In Alfa-Bank, for example, the VIP status of a client is determined by membership in the A-Club. Membership in this elite club is possible if the client's current account or deposit has an amount of at least $250,000 and a Visa Gold or Visa Infinite card is opened.
Depending on which card the client owns, he can receive a different set of services. In the standard version, these are information and consulting services and booking, in the extended version - the organization and planning of the client's personal time, the purchase of gifts for the family in business trip abroad, pet delivery to the veterinarian.
There are more extensive lists, including translation services, booking tickets (from a hotel to an invitation to Fashion Week or a rocket launch in New Mexico), recruiting service personnel (governesses, gardeners, administrators), a sober chauffeur service, renting yachts and villas, ordering and delivering flowers and gifts, representing at auctions, organizing cleaning services, installing alarms and selecting security structures, planning routes and trips with constant online support, searching for conference rooms, providing stock reports with analyst comments, searching for investors, ordering parts for car, emergency opening of doors, calling a doctor, organizing treatment in a foreign clinic,
Banks organize either their own services or work with special concierge companies.
Run All
To get a job in the concierge service, you need to pass almost the same selection as in the bank security service.
“If you want to create problems for a competitor, then poach his concierge manager,” jokes Karl Zbenek, head of the concierge division of the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank International.
According to Karl, very unusual requests are sometimes received, but they are carried out at the discretion of the bank manager: “If the client’s task is not related to breaking the law, infringing on someone’s rights and freedoms, then usually it is carried out, despite the absurdity or complexity.”
Anna Gor, an employee of the concierge agency Business & Privat Concierge (Berlin, Germany), says: “We work in three shifts, each shift lasts 8 hours, but I am in touch almost around the clock. Clients handle a variety of assignments, from walking a pet to arranging the transportation of equipment from a station in Alaska, for example, to Milan (Italy). We work with partner companies in other countries, as well as with contractors. Our agency has no permanent staff outside of Germany. Business trips are very rare, most often we solve all problems online. If the manager says that you need to go somewhere and personally follow something, then we serve a very important client.”
In California (USA) there is a free lifestyle service Candela Concierge, which performs household tasks: setting up the Internet, connecting TV, changing phone numbers and paying bills, installing alarms and personal protection. Customers pay only for the work of subcontractors, but at minimum rates, because Candela Concierge has partnership agreements with many services in all cities of the state.
Loyalty test
Despite the low awareness of people about the possibility of using concierge services, the demand for the service is gradually growing. According to the statistics for 2014, clients contacted the concierge managers of leading banks about 10 thousand times with a variety of instructions (statistics of VIP clients). For the most part, the tasks concerned solving problems in foreign trips.
Concierge managers solve absolutely all problems. There is no such task that they could not perform. Since last year, banks began to pay special attention to the work of their service departments, because this is a very significant part of the loyalty program. If the customer is satisfied with the service, he is loyal. Loyalty is deposits, investments and expanding the scope of cooperation, which automatically means an influx Money to the bank.
Alexey Samoylenko, a client of Alfa-Bank, Moscow, shares his impressions: “I recently became the owner of a gold Visa cards from Alfa Bank. When processing the documents, the manager separately drew my attention to the fact that now I have a personal assistant to whom I can entrust the execution of a whole list of tasks (the list turned out to be 2 A4 sheets). At first, I didn’t even think about calling someone and asking them to do something. When my secretary couldn't connect flights properly and I was stuck at the NYC airport with an overstay, the concierge solved the problem in 45 minutes. Then I understood what it means to be a premium client. Now I use the concierge more often, handle the usual tasks that an assistant used to perform. Comfortable. Assistant busy important work, and the concierge manager now handles hotel tickets and visas.”
Concierge service is a good opportunity for clients to entrust the implementation of diverse tasks to bank employees. Premium-class cardholders can count on fast round-the-clock information support and assistance in obtaining goods and services. The article discusses the features of this proposal in various organizations.
Typically, bank concierge service is offered to premium card holders. Sometimes a list of cards is established that allow you to use this program.
As part of the offer, it is available to get round-the-clock access to various information (restaurants, transport, hotels, resorts, entertainment places, etc.). You can, for example, find out where the necessary organization is located, what its pricing policy, menu, list of services provided, how to get to the destination, Contact phone numbers etc. It also implies the ability to book any service, purchase a ticket.
Some banks provide a separate cost for the concierge service, others include all costs in the service price bank card. This service is activated automatically during the registration of the card. If you do not want to use the concierge service, check with the bank about the possibility of deactivating it. But if the product is provided free of charge, it makes no sense to refuse the concierge service.
To order a specific service, you need to call " hotline”, indicated on the official website of the financial institution.
Basic services within the concierge service
By connecting the concierge service, you can:
This service covers various areas activities.
1. Travel:
2. 
Courier services:
3. Current issues:
4. Solving business problems:
Each bank sets its own terms of service, the list of services provided and their cost. Therefore, the basic features can be supplemented by separate offers.
Sberbank concierge service offers:
In Raiffeisen Bank, the concierge service does not imply an additional commission. The cost of the product is included in the tariff for using the card. Here you can get the following services:
VTB concierge service offers the following additional services:
Gazprombank offers its customers a choice of several cards, according to which the concierge service is provided free of charge. In addition to the main features:
Otkritie Bank offers the following additional services:
Alfa-Bank offers a concierge service to legal entities and entrepreneurs. The first month the service is provided free of charge, in the future its cost is 1,500 rubles per month. The number of requests to the bank is not limited. As part of the basic concierge service, the bank offers to receive.
