It's unfashionable to admit this in the age of do-it-your self online tools, but here it is: I miss travel agents.
The internet took off as a way to book travel because the human intermediaries were always a bit suspect -- their expertise questionable, their methods opaque and their allegiances unclear. At first, the machines seemed to improve everything. Booking online is now much easier than in the past.
And yet, you might welcome an emerging trend on the internet: Startups that are trying to put human agents, whether in travel, home services or shopping, back at the centre of how we make decisions.
"A lot of companies pushed hard on the idea that technology will solve every problem, and that we shouldn't use humans," said Paul English, co-founder of Lola Travel. "We think humans add value. We're trying to design technology to facilitate the human-to-human connection."
English isn't allergic to tech. He was chief technology officer of booking site Kayak, and often manned the customer service phone line. "I tried to create the best travel website," he said. "But as good as we thought our tech was, often I thought I did a better job for people on the phone than our site could do."
"At one time the internet scared travel agents because our customers didn't need us," said Joe McClure, president of Montrose Travel in California. But he said his business has lately been thriving. "What happened is information overload," he said. "People research themselves into a circle and get confused. Then they call agents and say, 'Would you help me out?'"
It's not just in travel that we're being asked to shoulder more work. Now, rather than consult an insurance agent, you search online. You never go into a bank, you use the ATM. You can buy stocks without a broker, you can publish a book without a publisher, you can sell a house without an agent and buy a car without a dealer. Slowly but surely, robots seem to be replacing all the middlemen and turning us into a self-serve society.
But, there remain realms of commerce in which guidance from a human expert works better than a machine. Consider the process of finding a handyman or plumber. "It's going to be a long time until a computer can replace the estimating power of an experienced handyman," said Doug Ludlow, founder of Happy Home Company, a startup that uses human experts to find the right person for your job.
It isn't feasible to get humans involved in all of purchases. Humans are costly and they're limited in capacity. The great advantage of computers is that they "scale": Software can serve more customers for ever-lower prices.
But one of the ironies of the digital revolution is that it has also helped human expertise scale. Thanks to texting, human customer service agents can serve multiple customers. They can access reams of data about your preferences, allowing them to quickly find answers for your questions.
As a result, for certain purchases, the cost of adding human expertise can be a trivial part of the overall transaction.
The rise of computers is often portrayed as a great threat to all of our jobs. But these services sketch a more optimistic scenario: That humans and machines will work together, and we, as customers, will be allowed, once more, to lazily beg for help.
The internet took off as a way to book travel because the human intermediaries were always a bit suspect -- their expertise questionable, their methods opaque and their allegiances unclear. At first, the machines seemed to improve everything. Booking online is now much easier than in the past.
And yet, you might welcome an emerging trend on the internet: Startups that are trying to put human agents, whether in travel, home services or shopping, back at the centre of how we make decisions.
"A lot of companies pushed hard on the idea that technology will solve every problem, and that we shouldn't use humans," said Paul English, co-founder of Lola Travel. "We think humans add value. We're trying to design technology to facilitate the human-to-human connection."
English isn't allergic to tech. He was chief technology officer of booking site Kayak, and often manned the customer service phone line. "I tried to create the best travel website," he said. "But as good as we thought our tech was, often I thought I did a better job for people on the phone than our site could do."
"At one time the internet scared travel agents because our customers didn't need us," said Joe McClure, president of Montrose Travel in California. But he said his business has lately been thriving. "What happened is information overload," he said. "People research themselves into a circle and get confused. Then they call agents and say, 'Would you help me out?'"
It's not just in travel that we're being asked to shoulder more work. Now, rather than consult an insurance agent, you search online. You never go into a bank, you use the ATM. You can buy stocks without a broker, you can publish a book without a publisher, you can sell a house without an agent and buy a car without a dealer. Slowly but surely, robots seem to be replacing all the middlemen and turning us into a self-serve society.
But, there remain realms of commerce in which guidance from a human expert works better than a machine. Consider the process of finding a handyman or plumber. "It's going to be a long time until a computer can replace the estimating power of an experienced handyman," said Doug Ludlow, founder of Happy Home Company, a startup that uses human experts to find the right person for your job.
It isn't feasible to get humans involved in all of purchases. Humans are costly and they're limited in capacity. The great advantage of computers is that they "scale": Software can serve more customers for ever-lower prices.
But one of the ironies of the digital revolution is that it has also helped human expertise scale. Thanks to texting, human customer service agents can serve multiple customers. They can access reams of data about your preferences, allowing them to quickly find answers for your questions.
As a result, for certain purchases, the cost of adding human expertise can be a trivial part of the overall transaction.
The rise of computers is often portrayed as a great threat to all of our jobs. But these services sketch a more optimistic scenario: That humans and machines will work together, and we, as customers, will be allowed, once more, to lazily beg for help.
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