Step into the Magic Layer by Colin Nagy
The world doesn’t need more on-demand apps, but we’ll get more anyway. What we need are more ways to get things done — with fewer apps. This magical paradox is coming faster than you think.
The on-demand economy is booming. Every vertical is saturated with well funded startups promising to satiate your desires in the next few minutes. Some have high fundamental utility (transportation), some less so (booze delivery), while others provide you with virtual proxies for real-life needs (telemedicine).
But there is a coming change for these on-demand services: they will all unify within an emerging service layer.
If I need to get to Brooklyn for lunch at Reynard, I book an appointment on Open Table, then open up Uber and maybe text my contact that I’ll be early. Or, preferably, I would have someone take care of these things for me. Call it a virtual assistant, or Facebook’s rumored ‘M’ service. This will be a great thing for the end user. Harder for the actual services themselves, and harder still for brands and their data.
Recently, Ramzi Yakob wrote insightfully that a messaging UI will be the primary way we use these services in the future.
Yakob sees that our current mode — opening up app after app — is unnatural and won’t succeed. “We are rapidly approaching a future where a messaging UI becomes the primary way in which we interface with the web of connected services,” he states. “From a consumer perspective, this is amazing. Your experience becomes keenly focused and simplified by not having to jump out of one app and into another to complete your ‘Jobs To Be Done,’ and it really feels like the internet is magic again…”
This might be accomplished by a new app that aggregates the hard work of other apps sitting below it in this service layer. For example, Olo has built up relationships with major chain restaurants around the U.S. where they handle online and mobile ordering. (Disclosure: I’ve served as an advisor to their founder on unrelated issues). Their newest product, Dispatch, lets you get your food in McLean, Virginia as easy as you do in the Lower East Side. A user orders, states they want their food for delivery, and Dispatch then bids it out automatically to whatever on-demand services sit in that ever- growing part of the transportation and logistics stack. It is a real hunger games, with Postmates fighting Uber for your business. The user gets something they couldn’t get before, in a frictionless way. And suddenly the coral reef of on-demand apps aren’t front and center.
In an alternate version of this future, a concierge layer handles increasingly more and more of your on-demand life. The founders of Alfred have basically put the Mandarin Oriental concierge in your pocket (minus the 700 dollar a night buy-in). Using the Hello Alfred app, you can manage all the services you use in one place (shopping, dry cleaning, laundry, home cleaning, etc). You also get a weekly visit from your dedicated “Alfred” home manager who puts everything away and leaves your home like a 5-star hotel. This is part tech platform, part service logistics company.
What if these become the centralized layer to get things done without having to open a ton of apps? Done well, they require levels of accountability and service we have not yet experienced in today’s on-demand economy.
Alfred treats their staff very well, with W-2 jobs and a culture that breeds loyalty. When you are doing high-touch work for clients, there is a real cost associated with 1099 labor, both in terms of turnover and in terms of dedication. It pays to treat people properly. In fact only through paying staff properly are you able to charge enough to make the enterprise work. This is quaint service industry wisdom, but something the on-demand world appears to miss as a fragmented universe.
This transition to a unified user experience will not only change these types of tactical services, but future hospitality as a whole.
This new ‘magic layer’ will evolve our relationship with the internet and allow the best parts of humans to leverage the best parts of technology.
Colin Nagy is Executive Director of Media and Distribution at The Barbarian Group. In this role, he leads a team that provides client counsel at the intersection of creativity, public relations, social/paid media and emerging platforms.
