Operator was just officially launched. The company, inspiration of Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, wants to be our personal shoppers. For things that need a personal touch to purchase, an Operator rep familiar with that particular type of product will communicate with you about the exact nature of the item you want and they’ll go out and do the legwork for you. Instead of hailing a cab, you hail a product.
The idea of Operator is not to pull shoppers for simple items which can be bought on Amazon, rather for things which need a human to work out.
Messaging will be the future atomic unit of modern commerce.
Via Techcrunch, the operators in the field will either be workers of the merchants who have partnered with Operator and will handle requests directly, or the request will be worked on by Operator agents directly.
They’ll send you pictures of the proposed item. If you hit, “I’ll take it”, the Operator system will charge the order to a credit card on file. The order is then shipped to you as fast as you need it.
The company is still in beta and requires an invite to join. You can request an invite here.
Now…will Operator have a great referral program like Uber? Who knows, but they do give you a personal link when you sign up and they promise that if you refer people you’ll get invited quicker.
HT: pymnts.com
