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Operator — Looking for something? Make a request and we'll find it.
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@joshconstine @naveen @gmc @rrhoover I've been calling it "Augmented Human Intelligence" and I love all the activity in this space (and I work on Ask Alexis).
@rrhoover assist is another one in this space. It's an incredibly tough one. I know from my experience at Zaarly and it makes me skeptical that anything that tries to be everything to everyone will succeed. I'm rooting for them, but I'd put my money on the service that specializes then expands rather than the one that tries to do it all from day 1. Remember, Amazon started as a book store.
@rrhoover for many many tears there has been a nice of the world that has enjoyed a concierge service that takes away a lot of headache - whether its services like tenuk or centurion or quintessentially - ultimately - it was always in the reach of the more afflluent or those that had credit banking relationships!
I feel you're seeing a new nexus coming - one is that the average audience is now trying to offload surplus work and "errand" style functioning. The idea they can offload to a service to do this from flowers to books is so much time saved for them. The problem has always been about building something that can replicate the "concierge experience" ie latency, immediate effectiveness etc.
The other part of this story is simply that the number of apps and web sites is overwhelming, especially for a population that is coming online for the first time and so an SMS/app-sms-chat service that can ultimately contextualize and narrow the web for the first time users is incredibly important.
Finally made my first transaction on Operator. Super smooth experience, saved me ~30 mins hunting for the vinyl I was searching for. 💸
My thoughts are that many small niche services will win in the long term. A service that understands me, my wants, likes, relationships and context. Can an Amazon really "know" me.
This is a good level of search breakdown. Sometimes you need personalized recommendations or search results.
For instance, many people prefer asking questions on Social media.
This reminds me of http://jelly.co/ . Which was crowdsourced rather than curated.
I have been waiting on this service to launch since they pre-launched last year. The mobile eCommerce experience has not had an app that really makes it seamless. I think Operator could be the app that wins as it focuses on use case first and fills exact request instead of having the user search and scroll to find the product that meets their needs.
This all comes down to accuracy and speed. How quickly can the operator get what I need and will it be the right thing. Is there some sort of machine learning where the operator will start to understand what I like and dislike?
the power of 'unstructured requests that are handled by humans/AI' not only has the potential to disrupt Amazon & eBay, it may also take a bite out of Google's search business as well.
Know this was what Aardvark was pitching back in the day, but Operator has the team to build and scale it.
Very interesting to me how you scale something like this while maintaining quality.
@talkaboutdesign outsourcing. Might be easier to pull off with text messaging, templates, etc than even with phone calls. Messaging needs to replace call centers. Imagine even the escalation of an issue is more seamless for an end user in this case.
Looks awesome. I was disappointed to see it wasn't available in the Canadian store though. :/ You know we do spend money at US retailers -- particularly on the web.
Checkout www.commersational.com. It turns any ecommerce catalog to an operator like service.
Love the homepage value prop. message.
"Hello Operator - Looking for something? Make a request and we'll find it for you."
Differentiates. Wins attention. And finishes with a compelling call to action.
Job done :)
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