AI glasses continue to face both rapid growth and PR backlash around their privacy concerns, à la “pervert glasses.” But the category – best known for Ray-Ban Meta Smartglasses (RMS) – has another endpoint that’s rarely discussed: the ability to upskill and elevate the work of home-services pros.
This is a large revenue segment of the local economy, often invoked in our analysis around AI adoption. For example, because home services pros are deskless, processing incoming leads into booked appointments has always been a pain point. But agentic tools increasingly automate such functions.
But here we’re talking about a different form of AI, delivered in a different form factor. Using smart glasses with cameras and multimodal intelligence (voice & visual), they can elevate job-site capabilities. This includes line-of-sight reference material or see-what-I-see support from remote senior staff.
Backing up, AI glasses formats continue to diverge, but they’re mostly split between non-display glasses (RMS) and simple 2D display systems. The former rely on visual input with audible output (again, multimodal), while the latter offers visual guidance. Non-display is more prevalent, but both apply here.
Skills Gap
One reason all the above could be opportune and well timed is the macro environment. Though trade professions like roofing and electrical work can be quite lucrative, they’ve developed stigmas in our culture – especially among Gen-Y and Z helicopter parents who all think their children will be President.
For that and other reasons that dissuade trade school admissions, young men and women entering trade professions have plummeted over the past decade. And this has led to a skills gap and a workforce shortage. That gap is further amplified and made urgent by the retirement of baby boomers en masse.
Back to smart glasses, they – along with more rugged and bulky AR headsets – have already demonstrated an ability in industrial environments to scale finite resources. Faced with many of the same macro challenges – such as boomers retiring – these industrial enterprises upskill novice staff faster.
That has happened on two levels. The first was teased above: patching in remote senior staff to guide a given field rep (think: server maintenance). This place shifts the senior expert, making them more scalable. The second takes things a step further with automated and AI-guided instruction sequences.
Trickle Down
But with all those factors and market validation, guided work through smart glasses hasn’t made its way to local home services to a meaningful degree. This delayed adoption isn’t surprising, as emerging tech often takes longer to trickle down from the Fortune 500 to tech-challenged SMBs.
But all the pieces are in place for AI glasses’ impact on home services. There will continue to be adoption barriers, despite the no-brainer use case – a pattern we’ve watched for a few decades. But adoption could also accelerate once the use case is proven and service pros start to see competitors doing it.
Beyond competitive pressure, another powerful motivator awaits – quality of life. Like the industrial example of the place-shifted senior expert, senior home service pros – who are sometimes owners – can sit back at the home office with a cup of coffee while guiding and orchestrating a fleet of journeymen.
This use case can also extend from, and synergize with, other AI integrations we’re seeing. For example, the inbound lead processing noted above can now have a face-worn UI so field pros can get both guided job support and admin info on their next job. Again, it could take a while, but this is the long-run outlook.
