Technology is Being Used to Enhance All Kinds of Services. Here are a Few Trends We're Seeing.

It’s often easy, especially during a global pandemic and massive lockdowns, to assume that we are living our entire lives online.  Our food, clothes, and other necessities are delivered to our door.  Our jobs, meetings, and even happy hours happen almost entirely online (though that is quickly changing). 

Yet, there are parts of our lives that cannot happen online. Major elements of the economy that still require a hands on, live approach.  Software cannot groom a pet, give a massage, cut hair, or store goods. Software cannot hang art, plant trees, or paint walls.  Yet, even in these very human effort-driven industries, technology is playing a major role. 

At Steadfast, we’ve seen more and more companies, established firms and new startups alike, getting into the technology-enhanced services business.  So today, we wanted to walk through a few of the models we’ve seen, so that you as a business owner or entrepreneur can think about how it fits into your ideas and businesses. 

Creating convenience with technology

Even before the pandemic, convenience was king.  Scheduling apps, curbside pick-up, and services that come to you were starting to see mass adoption.  The pandemic and its necessities accelerated this trend.  

The most obvious of these is that anything that can happen by appointment, is happening by appointment.  This has been vital with social distancing regulations, preventing customers from piling up in waiting rooms.  There are a host of technologies that make simple appointment setting easy, often embeddable directly into the company website. 

Another version that was happening before the pandemic but that is getting more prominent today is the “come to you” service.  This is once again handled by appointment, but involves the service provider coming to the customer, wherever they may be, and providing the service. From hair cuts in your home, to car washes in your driveway, to pet grooming in a specially outfitted vehicle outside your apartment, these services are the epitome of convenience, often utilizing online payments for a fully touchless experience. 

Aggregating, centralizing, and creating marketplaces

Technology has not just been able to create convenience for the customer.  We have also seen the rise of service aggregators, providing marketplace-style experiences to bring service providers and customers together. 

These kinds of services make a lot of sense.  The service provider is able to rely on the marketplace for marketing, appointment setting, and even sales in some cases, while the customer can find local services that they otherwise would have had to dig through google maps or one of a number of review sites to find.  

Another version of this is something we’ve seen more and more in the storage and warehousing industry. Traditionally, self storage was done by finding a storage facility near you, then going and renting a unit.  However, in the last couple of years, a new kind of service has risen in which the company sends movers to you, picks up your things, and stores them for you.  You can track your belongings through a web platform, and then request them to be delivered whenever you’d like them back. 

The beauty of this model is that the platform itself is able to contract out the actual storage to a number of established storage and warehousing companies in local communities.  These storage companies save on marketing sales, while the customer gets all the convenience of a “come to you” service. 

Realizing the consulting/ecommerce hybrid 

Perhaps the most interesting version of the tech-enhance service that is rising today is the consulting/ecommerce hybrid.  There are a number of industries that have always straddled the line between professional services and retail sales. Interior design and construction are perhaps the most obvious of these industries.  The designer’s and contractor’s primary jobs are to act as consultant and facilitator, giving advice and executing on the vision for the space. 

However, often both the designer and the contractor are also selling a number of goods, including furnishings, furniture, art, accessories, finishes, and more. Recently, we’ve seen more companies across the industry begin to look for ways to take both their consulting and sales online. 

By creating platforms which make it easy for clients to engage with design concepts and selections, while enabling online purchases, these companies are able to give clients a transparent and interactive experience even when not physically in the same showrooms or conference rooms. 

These are just a few of the kinds of tech-enhanced service concepts we’re seeing pop up more and more.  This doesn’t even get into the way that pure consulting is going more online, with consultants able to engage with clients through online portals, rather than needing to meet in person.  

There is no doubt that while technology can never hang a piece of art, it can certainly make everything around that art much easier.