HUFFINGTON
10.28.12
THE HELP
tours of vehicles and answer questions from customers.
“It’s not terribly surprising in
a digital age,” says Hobley. “It’s
become so hard for a company to
build a relationship with you.”
In a similar vein, finding just
about any goods or services online
these days can be overwhelming,
Hobley says, thanks to the deluge
of offerings on the internet.
“We’re just overwhelmed by
information,” says Hobley. “People will pay to whittle down 200
choices down to 20.”
The twist here is that the hired
help now tell their bosses what
to do. Clients are willing to have
less power over certain aspects of
their lives, because it’s easier than
doing it themselves.
“This is why it kind of matters
that you have some faith in the
concierge, who is your proxy, to
make the decision for you,” says
Rachel Sherman, a professor of
sociology at the New School who
has studied concierge providers.
“If you want your concierge to give
you 10 options, you are sacrificing
seeing the other 500 options that
the concierge is going to look at.”
Whether that’s a good thing
or a bad thing, Sherman says, may
depend on the individual client and
“I KNOW A CONCIERGE
WHO IS SPECIALIZING
IN THE PATIENTS OF
PLASTIC SURGEONS.”
how much they care about sacrificing choice versus spending time.
Through their marketing, Sherman says, service providers try to
circumvent the idea that handling
tasks yourself has an inherent value.
“The research that I did indicated that the more general lifestyle management concierges are
being sold as a way of outsourcing
the parts of your life that are not
rewarding to you. They’re always
saying, ‘We do what you have to
do you, so you can do what you
want to do.’ That’s a very frequent
tag line you see,” says Sherman.
Ariana Massarat, 30, who works
in business development for AT&T,
started paying for a virtual assistant three months ago to help plan
her wedding after finding a deal
on a flash sale website for a company called Fancy Hands. Since
then, Massarat has had assistants