Transitional services…
I just came across this blog entry from Freshbooks founder Michael McDerment (if you do any billing or client management and want something a little cleaner and lighter than QuickBooks, check it out). The push of the piece was how there’s a potentially lucrative business model in providing a bridge between traditional physicalized services and newer virtualized ones. The example from the post being Freshbooks’ serving up invoices in both the email and snailmail varieties.
I couldn’t agree more, and have been mulling over this concept for quite a while. It seems to me a number of industries suffer this false dichotomy — either you’re bleeding-edge and servicing the tech savvy crowd or you’re traditional, and you’re more hands on, with a real-live receptionist answering phones (and greeting guests — in the old world people really met in real life too).
One industry that’s always struck me as struggling with this is the real estate world, both residential and commercial. They’re a perfect target for transitional services. Much of their work has always been done virtually, via phone or fax, and increasingly over email, but physical presence is an inevitability for almost any transaction. As a whole, they seem unwilling to make the leap into the 21st century, maybe for fear of alienating their more traditional customer base, maybe out of reluctance to change their style of doing business, or maybe something else…
It’s probably true that as information brokers, much of the value they bring to the table is diminished as the industry moves online. The more savvy of the bunch will increasingly find ways to make themselves relevant, but in order to do so, transitional services will be required as a bridge between old and new business models and practices.
There are so many inefficiencies in this sector (some might argue that any transaction requiring brokerage is inherently inefficient), but brokers and agents interested in finding ways to improve the customer experience should win out in the end — and anyone with the knowhow to help them here could win big too.