This blog first published in Retail Week
One of the first big Internet companies was Freeserve, it launched in 1998 and the Internet boom started. For years people talked about e-commerce, but nothing happened. Smug people said "I told you so," a few years later than expected, companies like Amazon finally came onto the scene and then the e-commerce boom started. Then people said e-commerce would have a big effect on the high street but nothing really happened, and the same smug people said: "I told you so." Things have now changed so the big question now is, has the tipping finally arrived? This year, Retail Week has been busy with lots of stories, and the truth is the next generation has caused a lot of this. Older people like me use the Internet in one way, but younger people have grown up with the Internet and use it in a different way. The thing that's changed everything is the smartphone. Wherever I go, people have got a smartphone in their hand. People are addicted to it, go on a train or bus and people are looking down at their phones. When I look at my family at home, young and old, they are looking their phones, it's seems part of their lives. Companies that are doing well are the companies that know how to exploit this technology. The other thing that's changed is the next generation not only live on this technology, they don't think twice about using it to buy something and but they don’t think twice to return something if it's not right. Older people don’t like to send stuff back, younger people don’t have a problem sending stuff back. I've got three teenage daughters, and there is a constant stream of parcels to the house. I still prefer to go to town to spend my money, but my daughters are happy to use the technology and importantly also return things if they are not right. When the Internet first arrived, people used it just to surf the Internet, they didn’t use it buy anything. The technology to buy anything wasn’t there. When mobile phones first came out we only used them to make phone calls, the technology to anything else wasn’t there. Remember we only took them out of pockets when the phone rang? Now I am in a panic when I can’t feel my smartphone in my pocket. It tells me everything. Retailers are only limited by their imagination, every time I pay for my pasty at Greggs using ApplePay, I have a smile on my face, it’s absolutely fantastic. I am in no doubt the tipping point has now arrived and the companies that are doing well are the ones that know how to exploit the technology. As you read this, don’t forgot what you’ve got in your pocket and which companies are worth a fortune. Don’t be the ones that said “I told you so.”
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I recently watched a US episode of TV’s “Undercover Boss”, and in it, the boss of a large car manufacturer was shocked by what he found. I was more shocked that an intelligent, highly paid boss had never mystery shopped or engaged with his staff before. It was the same when I watched the UK version this week with the CEO of Moss Bros going undercover.
Believe me when I tell you that buying a car is a truly soul-destroying experience. If that is the case, I must conclude that senior executives in the auto industry have never actually tried to buy a car. They are given company cars, so they bypass the whole showroom experience. What’s wrong with a car showroom? Everything. Every time I go to a car showroom, I’m amazed at how little these guys know about the basics of retailing. I end up walking around imagining all the changes I would make by using simple retail principles that would increase sales. How? By just using empathy and imagine that I am the customer, it's not rocket science. But it's not just the car industry that makes it difficult for customers to do business with them, lots of retailers and retailers websites could also make it a lot easier for customers to do business with them. The big question you need to ask yourself is “do I employ people whose job is to make it as difficult as possible for a customer to do business with me?” A “Sales Prevention Department.” I’m convinced that in some companies the sales prevention department is, in fact, the biggest and most influential department. Why does it take a TV program for the chief executives to engage with staff and customers? Why do companies employ mystery-shopping companies? Why not ask staff in your head office to go and visit your stores unannounced. Get them to observe what your customers feel. Get the people that sit behind a desk sending out emails to go out onto the shop floor of your business and your competitors and talk to staff and customers. I worked in retail for 17 years and had plenty of planned visits from directors, we used to call them “Royal Visits,” and in all that time, I never once saw any of those directors talk to a customer and I never had anybody turn up unannounced just for a chat. This is basic, basic stuff. This is what entrepreneurs do - they talk to their customers and staff. My advice to retail bosses is, don’t complain about poor sales, get out there and improve your customer experience. Don’t use market research and surveys; they are for insecure middle managers. Get out onto the shop floor and ask people about their experiences. I warn you, if you’re easily offended, don’t do it, stay behind your desk. And finally, disband your sales prevention department now, then watch your business improve. Ajaz Ahmed founder, Freeserve and Legal365.com Demand for legal services in the future will not fall. Instead, customers will start spending their money with newer law firms and the cause of this change in legal spending will be new technology that will reduce the value of transactions.
Most law firms have yet to board the new technology train. Customers buying patterns have already slowly started to change, and it is not a case of it might happen, it has already begun to happen. The important question is, will your firm be on board the train? The problem with the legal industry is very simple. Customers will want to buy things that most law firms won't be selling. The majority of lawyers only sell one thing, 'time by the hour' and customers in the future won't be interested in buying that, they want fixed priced solutions. Start-ups and technology will sort out the problem, and in the future, that is where the money will go. As demand changes, old law firms will carry on selling the same old solutions with arguments as to why customers are wrong. Law firms need to look at acquiring start-ups and operating under different brands and new business models. They need to start thinking differently and diversifying. If your law firms doesn't change, you will not be able to respond to the future needs of customers. Rest assured that if you don't respond, the legal market is so large that someone else will take your customers. The choice is yours. Partners can carry on thinking about what wine to drink this weekend and where to go holiday or reflect on the insolvency company they might have to appoint in the future. Don't forget that disruptors always come from outside the industry. I'm a retailer, and I'm only interested in one thing, the customer. The solicitor's favourite line is “Look, you just don’t understand” and presumably you'll charge me by the hour to explain why I don't understand. Search 'Ajaz Ahmed Freeserve' on Google This blog was first published in Retail Week in response to another column.
Dear John, I read your column about the new Apple store with great interest. You ended it with "Or am I just being curmudgeonly?" I'm from the North, so I had to go to my Apple Air and type it into Google to find out what "curmudgeonly" means, I now know what it means. The photos of the store look beautiful, we don't have a store like that up here, I can't wait to buy a cheap day return train ticket to visit Regent Street to look at the refurbished Apple store and the Burberry store I've heard so much about. I'll probably want to get my 'Prayer Mat' out and start praying to good design when I'm down there. I was once talking to the Chancellor of our local University, and we began talking about our Apple phones, he then said "Have been visited the Apple store on 5th Avenue in New York?", " No" I replied, "You must go there on your next visit, it's stunning, it's worth a visit" I couldn't believe I was talking to someone about a shop. The Chancellor at the University of Huddersfield is a local lad, Sir Patrick Stewart, I couldn't believe that Jean-Luc Picard of the Star Trek Enterprise was telling me to visit an Apple Store, he was telling how good it was, that's the Apple effect. (I was on the Governing Council at the University) I'm the founder of Freeserve, and I was invited to the opening of the Apple Store and was there when it first opened and from the photographs of the refurbished store, it look's different from when it first opened. The big thing a lot of businesses get wrong is "Pivot", you need to keep changing. Lots of businesses only change after they have problems, read this magazine and look at examples of companies that are going through change because their customers are abandoning them. Apple stores are still busy because they go through a pivot when people are still shopping with them. Obviously, people don't understand this. And his comment about “Samsung are coming,” not a Samsung 7 on a plane I hope, you'd get arrested. In 1786, the cloth workers of Leeds, the textile centre of England, issued a protest against the growing use of “scribbling” machines, which were taking over a task formerly performed by skilled labour. “How are those men, thus thrown out of employ to provide for their families?” asked the petitioners. “And what are they to put their children apprentice to?”
When disruption comes, and make no mistake, it is going to come, some of the victims of disruption will be people who are currently considered highly skilled, and who invested a lot of time and money in acquiring those skills. In the legal world, we are going to be seeing a lot of “automation of knowledge work,” with software and Artificial Intelligence doing things that used to require skills only a university graduate possessed. So, when change comes, should people in the legal profession simply be prepared to acquire new skills? The wool workers of 18th-century Leeds addressed this issue back in 1786: “Who will maintain our families, while we undertake the arduous task of learning a new trade?” They also asked, what will happen if the new trade, in turn, gets devalued by further technological advance? And the modern counterparts of those wool workers might well ask further "what will happen to us if?" Like so many students, we acquire the skills we are told we need, only to learn that the economy no longer wants those skills? So, what’s the answer? To predict the future, we have only to look at the past, and we can simply look at history. We can’t pretend that change isn’t going to happen, so we can’t carry on making well-crafted arguments for maintaining the status quo because no one person can delay the inevitable. The big question is, are we going to behave like the Luddites? |