Corporate concierge services will take over the little details so that you can focus on your business and enjoying yourself. Learn more here.
The average American spends over 700 hours (30 days) each year doing errands. When you think about it in business terms, these wasted hours means money down the drain. That’s where corporate concierge services come in.
If you think a concierge means a butler named James handling your needs, it’s time to get updated with the new role of the concierge. Read on to learn more about corporate concierges and how they may be exactly what your business needs.
What is a Corporate Concierge?
A corporate concierge is a bit like a personal assistant, office secretary, and hotel concierge rolled into one. Their primary purpose is to make your life easier so you can better manage your business and yield better results.
A concierge achieves this by handling tasks and errand to enhance office organization and operations. This can occur on a personal or office-wide scale.
Who Needs a Corporate Concierge?
It’s a common misconception that corporate concierges are reserved for multi-million dollar businesses. In fact, corporate concierges are the perfect addition to a small business looking to expand.
Businesses that are undergoing mergers, relocations, or simply managing multiple teams can all benefit from the use of a corporate concierge. This is especially true for companies that require their employees to travel often and need added assistance for business trips.
What Corporate Concierge Services are Offered?
Depending on the corporate concierge agency, you’ll find a wide variety of services offered. It’s important to utilize the services that are best fitted for the unique needs of your business.
While each concierge agency has its own set of services offered, some common concierge services are:
Run Business Errands
Simple business hours can take a bulk of office hours, interfering with overall productivity. Fortunately, with a corporate concierge, you can delegate tasks like shipping out important documents, making copies, or printing out presentation materials.
Corporate concierges can also help you prepare for expos and conferences by arranging for flyers and booth banners to be printed.
Handle Laundry.
Whether it’s your own laundry before a business trip or a laundry locker reserved for the whole office, your corporate concierge can make sure clothing items are cleaned and ready to go in a timely matter.
Dry Cleaning Pick Up
If you’re an entrepreneur on the go, you may find you have little time to pick up and drop off your dry cleaning. Fortunately, your corporate concierge can handle the arrangements for you.
This is extra useful if you travel often for business and always need a clean suit on hand.
Grocery Shopping
Many offices are now opting to provide in-office groceries for their employees to enjoy. While this can be extra work incentive for your employees it can also take time out of an already busy schedule.
Pass of your grocery list to your corporate concierge who can arrange to have the shopping and putting away handled for you.
Prescriptions
Having to travel or work without your necessary prescription medications is not only inconvenient, but it’s also dangerous. Keep you and your employees safe by having your corporate concierge keep prescriptions filled, in stock and within close reach.
In the event that you forget your prescriptions, some concierges will even locate the closest pharmacy to your hotel and can arrange to have them delivered to you.
Client Gifts
Client and employee gifts should be personal, thought out, and memorable. Unfortunately, most business owners and office leads only to have enough time to find something more generic.
Not only can your corporate concierge find tasteful gifts for your clients, but they can also track down hard to find gifts like rare concert tickets or sporting event seats.
Additional Services
These are just some of the many services that can be tended to by corporate concierges, however, the list goes on.
From flight and driver arrangements to reservations at the newest hot spot in town, your corporate concierge can handle a wide range of tasks and requests.
What are the Benefits of Having a Corporate Concierge
Now that you know what a corporate concierge can do, it’s time to take a closer look at how the extra help can benefit your life and your workplace.
We’re sure you’ll find that once you’ve experienced life with a corporate concierge, you won’t know how you lasted so long without one.
Enhance Product Value
Product and service development was once the center of your attention and the backbone of your business. However, as businesses expand, operations and logistics tend to take more time than focusing on what you’re actually offering.
By designating tasks to your corporate concierge, you’ll have more time to focus on your product and how to improve it.
Unroll New Product or Service
Thinking about growing your line but don’t have the time or resources to focus on it? With the assistance of a corporate concierge not only can you free up more time to devote to product research, but you can easily organize its development.
Corporate concierges can help you book your spaces for focus groups, buy tickets to industry conferences and even schedule business trips to introduce your new products.
Stay Ahead of the Curve
In today’s market, those who aren’t able to keep up with product trends quickly get left behind. Don’t let your hard work go to waste. With the extra time you receive with a corporate concierge, you’ll be able to follow emerging industry trends that can be incorporated into your business.
You can even ask your corporate concierge to gather trend reports on a regular basis to save you the hassle of having to do the research yourself.
Attract Top Tier Talent
Hiring the best talent in the pool means being able to offer more than an impressive paycheck. Having a corporate concierge assist your team brings added value to your workplace, which attracts quality employees.
Benefits for Your Employees
It doesn’t take long for your employees to grow bored with busy work, which leads to lower workplace satisfaction. However, by being able to delegate errands and simple tasks to a corporate concierge, employees are able to focus more on the type of work they were truly hired for.
Enhance Customer Loyalty
How do you keep your customers returning again and again? You take the time to listen to them. With more time freed up with your corporate concierge, you can focus on interacting with your customers again and add a personal touch to your business.
You can also focus on audience research to learn directly from your customers how you can make your product better.
Upgrade Your Business Trips
Business trips can take up a large portion of a companies budget, which is why it’s important that they are well executed and go without a hitch.
From VIP transportation services to find the best spots to wine and dine your clients, a corporate concierge can help you get the most out of each of your business trips.
What to Look for in a Concierge Service
While any extra assistance will bring added value to your business, it’s important to remember that not every concierge service is created equal.
When looking for the right concierge agency, you’ll want to be on the lookout for some important factors.
Services that Match Your Needs
A long list of services can be impressive, however, there’s no reason to pay for services you don’t really need. Be sure to find a concierge service that is equipped to handle the needs of your business.
This means if you travel often for business they will be familiar with travel accommodations. Or, if you’re more focused on the client end you’ll want a concierge that can focus on bringing that extra “wow” factor that can help you win new business.
Extensive Training
Concierge staff needs to be well equipped in customer service, organization, project management and more. Which is why it may be worth inquiring about the agencies hiring and training process.
You’ll be trusting this agency with sensitive information and important tasks, so you’ll want to know ahead of time that they’ve been trained to handle anything.
Global Understanding
If you are looking for a concierge service to handle multiple offices and branches around the world, they’ll need a global understanding to fit the bill.
This means looking for concierge services that offer bilingual or translation services, are familiar with different customs and cultures, and won’t create any major faux pas due to a cultural misunderstanding.
White Label Services
If your concierge service will be interacting with your clients, sending notes, or making calls it’s important to have a “white label” method implemented
This means being sure that, as far as anyone else is concerned, the concierge is an employee of your business and all actions are done on behalf of your business.
Look Into References
Corporate concierges should be able to demonstrate that they are adept to the needs of a business your size and pace. For this reason, it may help to request references that you can reach out to.
Typically, other businesses are happy to share their experience with a concierge service.
Getting It Together
Whether you are looking for someone to tend to a few travel arrangements or need your whole office life to be tended to, corporate concierge services are the ideal way to upgrade your career life and make your business more proactive.