If you’ve traveled in the last few years, you may have run into a personal concierge service. I’ve typically seen this with hotels. See the screenshot of a text I received on my way to Ft. Lauderdale this past week from my hotel, Bahia Mar.

Sometimes the concierge service is a real person. Sometimes it isn’t, like what I ran into in Vegas in 2020 staying at the Cosmopolitan hotel. That was a bot service who helped to filter the most frequently asked questions related to the hotel. I tried it and it sucked, which sort of put me off this “personal concierge” service texts. I usually ignore them.

Then, on a recent order from Usual Wines, I received a unique card. Now, I have a “personal wine hotline.”

They want me to take it seriously, so they added the word “Seriously” at the end. Fine. I’ll bite. I texted them asking if this is a real person. It took a few minutes, but yes, a lady replied that she was indeed, a real person, and how can she help me today? There’s only one answer – I need wine. Essentially, she created a shopping cart for me and send me the link to finish checking out. Could I have done this on my own? Yes. But I guess she saved me a couple steps and it was kind of fun.

How could we use a service like this in our industry? Is it possible? I’ve been thinking about this for a few months. With the influx of new participants to the outdoors, many of whom are text savvy and frankly, don’t even WANT to talk to a person, how can we meet them where they are, which is on their phone? If you run an archery shop, could you buy into a text service that follows up with people after their purchase? You get them to agree to receive texts from you during the checkout process. Then, could you send a follow up text? Example: “Hey, thanks for buying from us. We want to be your archery/bowhunting/outdoors personal concierge service. Ask us anything. How can we help?”

The downside is handling the text messages. Who is the staffer in charge? Do you set hours to answer texts? I’m sure the service could reply with an auto message of “We reply to texts during business hours” to help off-set being on your phone 24/7.

I mean, my insurance agent is now texting me reminders of things I need to do. What if you texted your customers “Did you get your turkey tag? It closes here shortly for XYZ region. Here’s the link.” Or “For our best customers, we just received a small shipment of new XYZ bows. Would you like us to reserve you one?”

This is different than texting specials or deals. This is service based – not sales based (although yes, the whole point is to generate sales). You are finding your customers where they always are (their phones) and meeting them there to generate a personal relationship in a world where face-to-face interactions are still limited. Not everyone will take you up on it. In fact, I probably would have not texted the Usual Wine people if I didn’t do it for research purposes. (that’s a good line, huh?) But as more and more businesses offer such a personalized service, the more us consumers will become familiar with it – perhaps even expect it?

-- Michelle Scheuermann, editor, Archery Wire