Concierge App Development: Win Your Customer’s Heart

You like mobile apps, don’t you? You're certainly enjoying their benefits as a user and, perhaps, managed to find out app advantages as the owner. Yes, the mobile industry has made our life much easier and more enjoyable. No wonder, since applications are able to give users a comfortable being and push up business sales. Of course, this concerns companies in the hospitality sector either. That's why they've been increasingly ordering concierge apps.

Such companies have made the right choice because these apps provide a great opportunity to serve their customers in the best way. In our article, we’re going to describe all the advantages of concierge app development. And if you have any doubts, we’ll try to make you change your mind.

So, let's get started!

Mobile Concierge Definition

Talking about personal concierge software, we can say that such an application is useful to any company that provides its customers with different services, including:

• hotel business. The area especially needs a package concierge app. Undoubtedly, such a mobile service is the best way to increase the efficiency of your hotel business.

• restaurants, a catering business. Virtual concierge apps come in handy if users want to make dinner reservations at the restaurant or order home delivery (or other related) services.

• a personal assistant. These applications are aimed to help businessmen plan and hold all manner of conferences and other business events.

• resorts. Resorts strive to offer the best services to their guests in order to satisfy their needs completely, and digital concierge systems will help your staff achieve such an important aim. Your clients would be pleased, which means they're more likely to leave positive feedback on the site and even recommend your resort to their friends.

• the entertainment industry. An application offers users a list of great performances, movies, exhibitions, concerts, and parties and provides customers with the possibility to book a ticket for a premiere or another desirable event in a few clicks.

• Bed & Breakfast / Guesthouses. A hotel concierge app allows customers to book a room, view the images of the interior and exterior of an establishment, order room services, chat with the staff, leave comments, etc.

• travel agencies. In this case, a digital concierge app contains the most interesting and useful features targeted at avid tourists: information about new hotels and restaurants, special offers from airlines, travel tips, the possibility to book a ticket, and plan the best route. Undoubtedly, an app of this sort would allow users to wander around the world with maximum comfort.

Read our article to find out why your hotel needs an app.

To create concierge software for hotels and other areas of the hospitality sector, you should start by selecting the desired functionality. 

Let's study the issue more closely.

Mobile Concierge Service Features

Virtual concierge apps offer a great lot of possible features. There is a list of the most popular options, which would assist a user to...

• book a table at the restaurant;

• view photos of interiors of hotels, restaurants, and other establishments;

• book a hotel room at the best price in high season;

• make a reservation (let’s say if you're going to visit a social event);

• study the virtual menu of a restaurant;

• find out and make up the best route (if you're a tourist);

• get information on your flight and buy air a ticket;

• take advantage of the online chat;

• leave feedback and ask questions;

• receive recommendations about local institutions and places of interest.

In other words, a concierge service app is a convenient way to interact with clients. Guests get access to a wide range of services of a hotel, sanatorium, tourist base, restaurant network, hostel, or other similar institutions. And a business owner receives a modern tool able to bring him additional income and help improve the quality of guest service.

Of course, it is very important to understand the specifics of your target audience. The best concierge apps are always developed in concordance with individual requirements, and therefore you should be careful when assigning the task to developers.

App Concierge Benefits

Of course, most of the concierge apps benefits are quite obvious, but we'd like to list them anyway:

1. Understanding the true needs of your target audience. You may build any number of assumptions of what your consumer expects and wants to get, but no one is able to guarantee that you have guessed right. The optimal solution is a special feature analyzing the user's behavior in your application and providing you with a detailed report. Having this report, you’ll understand what exactly your potential client is looking for, and adjust your personal concierge app to suit his needs.

2. Increasing customer loyalty. The advantage in question logically appears from the knowledge of your target audience. When we really know our customer, we can offer him what he truly wants, which means we're increasing his loyalty.

3. Improving brand visibility. Your company ceases to be faceless and "invisible". With the power of online concierge apps, it's easier to express your brand identity.

4. High speed. The concierge application helps to interact with a client at lightning speed and fulfill his wishes (such as room service) in the shortest possible time. So, the speed factor also affects customer loyalty.

5. Reducing human-factor mistakes. Even the most responsible person is still just a human being with all ensuing consequences. That’s why you should secure and support human work with infallible AI technologies.

6. Business process automation. A mobile concierge app has every chance to simplify your business by automating a number of processes. As a result, the overall efficiency of your business is going to increase significantly.

7. Cost-saving. Having your business processes automatized (at least partly), you're getting the opportunity to reduce the costs for the staff services. Therefore, online concierge apps are able to raise your income.

8. Being relevant. To succeed, you need to keep abreast with the times. And a digital concierge for hotels and other establishments of the hospitality sector is an inherent element of our modern world.

9. Broader coverage of the target audience. Remaining relevant and up-to-date, you’re able to easily reach and embrace the youth area of your audience. We're quite sure it's worth your effort!

10. The increase in the number of orders. A concierge pad app will give you an additional influence on clients and help increase their buying activity. You'll get the possibility to force your customers to make a purchase or order a service, even if they didn't plan to do it. How does it work? Really simple: studying applications and their features, a user sees an exciting offer and cannot resist the temptation. Say, hotel guests impressed by a spectacular restaurant menu could order the food whose images and descriptions they liked so much.

11. A powerful marketing tool. If you wish, you can use your application for marketing purposes either. It means you should not only work on the company image and increase customer loyalty but also promote your brand and expand the target audience.

12. Control over staff productivity. Detailed app reports help a business owner monitor and measure the level of staff productivity, including their order processing speed. This would allow you to work with feedback from customers more effectively and fine up internal work processes.

13. An additional communication channel. Of course, one should not forget about such an important advantage of concierge apps, as another channel of communication with your client!

14. A new service level. Customers no longer need to call or stay close to a PC to order what they want. It's enough to have an iPhone or another device at hand! And since your staff will be able to process these requests faster, clients will have a better impression of the level of your service.

15. Reliability. System notifications (email, push, or SMS) won’t allow you to lose or miss a customer's order.

16. One more monetization method. A concierge pad app can and should become a source of revenue. 

Wanna know more about it? Click here and read our article on the topic in question.

To summarize, we should say: various types of concierge apps contribute to increasing your business profitability and customer loyalty. Therefore, you're establishing your brand reputation and taking a step towards further success.

Concierge Software for Staff

A mobile concierge app must be properly configured to meet the needs of management and staff. In this case, the employees of a hotel, tourist office, or other institution that works in the hospitality sector would serve guests anytime and anywhere combining various internal processes with maximum efficiency.

Therefore, the package concierge app’s features aimed at personnel should include:

• Executive assignment system;

• Control over the customer requests processing;

• Online communication with hotel guests (through the online chat);

• Processing online orders;

• View order history;

• Distributing push notifications;

How Concierge Apps Work

As we’ve already figured out, a well-designed and thought-out application can be of great help to your business. However, in order to better understand why a mobile concierge service is so effective, let's briefly describe how it works.

So, we’d like to outline the main stages of the process of interaction between users, an application, and representatives of the company (a restaurant, hotel, travel agency, etc):

1. A client's request: booking a hotel room, reserving a table, buying a ticket for the next flight...

2. The analysis of the request and (if required) the performer selection.

3. Performing the request.

4. Customer feedback. If a client didn’t leave his comments, take the initiative to ask him whether he has been pleased with your service. Always insist on getting feedback! If necessary, automate the process of requesting comments and feedback either.

5. The results analysis. It's very important to analyze each feedback received, every comment, especially a negative one. Determine if the situation can be corrected. Think about how to avoid such failures in the future.

6. Work on service quality improvement. Based on the analysis of your failures, develop a strategy to improve your business.

Following this simple scheme, you’ll always go great guns.

How to Develop One of the Best Concierge Apps?

There are a few steps required to build a concierge service app:

1. Definition of functionality. It’s very important to choose the right set of features that would satisfy your target audience’s needs. Features aimed at the traveler aren’t always useful to frequenters of social events or businessmen who need a digital assistant.

2. Data collection. Of course, in most cases, you won’t do without access to external databases. You possess some information too (say, what hotel rooms are available at the moment), but to get other data (such as information about the nearest flights) you'll have to interact with different resources. We cannot provide you with all of them, so we'll just give you a few examples. And if you want to have more accurate information, you’re more than welcome to contact our experts! Now then, here are instances of databases that are accessed through APIs integrated into your concierge application:

   • Flightstats.com offers full information on flights, such as flight status, flight schedules, airports & airlines, airport lookup, airport delay index, airport weather, etc.

   • developer.ean.com is helpful if one needs to find and book services.

3. A qualified human team. In some cases, human service is highly needed. Undoubtedly, hotels and restaurants cannot manage without qualified personnel. Imagine a luxury hotel! Its guests would be pleased to deal with real people but they would also be happy to get quicker help provided due to the digital concierge for hotels. Spend time and effort in order to hire a team of people who really know their trade.

4. Integrating AI elements into your app. Artificial intelligence which used to be quite expensive has become much more available now. Of course, a concierge service app completely based on API technology is a cost-is-no-object approach. It's much more effective and reasonable not to replace human intellect with an artificial one, but only to support and supplement it with additional assistance. Combine human teams with reliable bots having access to extensive databases, and the result will definitely please you and your clients!

5. Design. Be sure to pay proper attention to the expressive design. The app interface should be noticeable, memorable, concise, and intuitive. The task may seem impossible but experienced UX designers know all the trends related to personal assistant concierge apps and are skilled enough to find the right solution.

6. Hiring developers. If you don’t have experience developing applications, you’re unlikely to manage the task successfully. We recommend that you find a team of experts who would do the work instead of you. 

In our blog post, we’ve given a lot of useful tips on the easiest way to find the best development team.

Finding Developers

As we’ve already mentioned, searching for the right developers is a very important and difficult task. You need to find professionals whom you would safely trust. Agilie team hopes to help you in this regard, as we have everything to bring your digital concierge app idea to life without wasting your time and money.

Our advantages:

• Over 10 years of experience in the development of various applications (hotel booking engines are no exception);

• Professional expertise;

• The team of experts of all types: IOS, Android and web developers, UI/UX designers, QA experts, copywriters, managers, SMM marketers, PR specialists, etc.

• Absorption in the work. We're really enjoying our work. And enthusiasm, as you know, is one of the success factors.

We offer:

• End-to-end solutions. We’ll perform all the project stages, from market research to the mobile concierge app publication on AppStore and Google Play. If necessary, we'll provide your app with subsequent support to ensure its trouble-free operation.

• Modern technologies. We're using the latest state-of-the-art technologies and following brand-new IT trends.

• Security. We know how to protect your concierge service app from hacking and external attacks.

• The individual approach. We don't use ready templates and start every project from scratch. You'll have a unique app solution tailored to your specific needs.

• Business processes visibility. We provide full reporting on each stage of our interaction.

• Guarantees. We're ready to sign a contract, which would detail all the conditions for our successful cooperation.

• Ergonomics. We'll develop an ergonomic mobile concierge service with a thoughtful interface allowing you to delete or add any information really quickly.

• A full accounting of the client's wishes. Our QA team will conduct comprehensive testing of your app to ensure that all your wishes have been fully taken into account.

We promise to implement a unique concierge application adapted for different platforms and ready to become an effective tool to promote your business in the hospitality sector. And your customers will get their benefits by enjoying the increased level of your services.