H: Glen Thompsett, host
J: Jon Smith, First Artist Corporation
B: Bryony Clow, Vodafone

H: Hello and welcome to the Business Show bought to you today by Vodafone, I’m Glen Thompset. Now you know what they say, time is money, a recent report by the UK’s leading business folk are suggesting the response times to emails and phone calls is lagging, we could be a lot better in this country, you know what they say, if you don’t respond straight away you’ve lost thousands and thousands of pounds. We’ve got a couple of guys in the studio today with us who can explain how that can improve your business by responding quicker, Jon Smith whose the Chief Executive Officer of First Artist Corporation and Bryony Clow from Vodafone, thanks very much for joining us in the studio today

B: Hello

H: Jon let’s start with you – response times for a business like yours, a big artist management company is vital – we’re talking thousands, millions of pounds indeed?

J: Well yes pertinently in our business, at transfer deadline times – we – you know when you’re transferring footballers there’s only two windows you can transfer footballers these days, one is in January and one is June / July / August, so you get into that deadline time, second couple of weeks of August, and instantly, instantly, instantly is what it’s all about, so you have to – but that’s a bit of a manufactured position, but if we didn’t have mobile communications, none of this would be at all possible. But just generally, I mean we work across in all the areas we work, we work across time zones, and it’s very very frustrating that the people, the corporate sector in Britain, tends to be way behind the 8 ball here. If you get a call or an email in the States, in particular in the States, you get a response, even if it’s a holding response. In Europe it’s better. In Australasia it’s better, the average time, according to the Vodafone survey that we’re going to discuss today, in the UK is 9 hours

H: So Bryony Clow from Vodafone – why are we so bad here? What’s the problem?

B: Well first and foremost the research that we’ve done is our way of giving back investing into the customers, the business customers that we have and we wanted to have a look, take a sort of barometer check on what businesses are struggling with at the moment and email response time, and like you say there has been this massive climate shift in the last two or three or four years where expectations have been heightened in business. People are expecting responses sooner because they know technology has shifted to accompany that – email, mobile email, text messages. I think, culturally we’re finding that the findings say, 30% of businesses in the UK are – would like a two hour response to email, like Jon says, the average is 9 hours, regionally we’re finding that that differs right through from Plymouth, the most impatient town in Britain, they would like a response in 6 hours

H: Oh really?

B: Right through to Norwich where they’re a bit more laid back and they’re happy with 14 hours. This isn’t just any old email, this is new business, this is an opportunity to make thousands of pounds, and what they’re saying to us is if you’re away from your email for two hours, they’ll go somewhere else, that opportunity’s gone, and what we’re finding is on average that’s worth £18,000. One in 30 of those emails is worth £100,000 and all in all that amounts to £31 billion of deficit, UK plc is taking a hit on year on year

H: That’s a lot of money isn’t it?

B: That’s a lot of money

H: That is a lot of money. So we’re talking of responding within the first two hours of getting an enquiry, making an immediate response to that enquiry?

B: As Jon says, some sort of holding response is I think - would help a lot of customers just reassure them that you’ve got the email, you’re looking at it, and you can agree, depending on the business you’re in, as to what is an acceptable time, and you give them that time in that holding response. And there’s all sorts of other tips we can talk through in the course of the program, but that’s just a real no-brainer that people can do is have an auto-response set. It’s a bit like changing your voicemail. Instead of having a voicemail that is leave a message, beep, it’s – personalise the voicemail, so say it’s the 29th September, I’m in the office today, I’m in meetings this morning, I’ll get back to you this afternoon. If you get those voicemails, I’m sure we can all say, do you know what, that makes me feel a whole lot better, I know where they are, I know that they’re going to get back to me, and it’s little things, commonsensical things that UK business could do that at the moment it seems that they’re not doing. They want to have the immediacy of response, and we’re finding nearly you know 90% of businesses want an immediate response to things, but at the same time, they are – they’re not putting really simple things in place

H: Jon, we’ve almost become impatient, you know it’s got to be done by yesterday?

J: Well it’s a seed change really isn’t it I mean the world has changed, I mean dramatically changed actually, everything has changed. Coming again – I don’t want to harp on too much about what we do but in the football world we have this word tradition which pops up every now and again, but actually the biggest successes we’ve had in the football world is since the Premier League was in existence, which is a whole new ball game. So the word tradition, it’s nice to have tradition, but since the turn of the century the technological advances in all of our lives, from TVs to web programs to – my kids get programming on their I-Pods now and on PSPs and things like that so I think Britain has been a bit slow, not personally, the personal bit Britain’s been actually quite advanced, but corporately Britain seems to have been a bit slow –

H: We’re lagging behind

J: They’ve always said well, nice to go home and have a cup of tea, take your feet – take your shoes off your feet and take the dog for a walk or whatever you’re going to do, I’m off duty. So there’s been this invasiveness theory that work is work, my down time is my down time. We were a nation of shop keepers weren’t we, we shut at 5.30 –

H: That’s right

J: And that’s changed, I think we’ve been a little slow to adapt to that change and – but the best thing in the world now, other than chocolate, is mobile emailing, because now you don’t have to have – what I guess is an intrusive phone ringing, or have it on your body all the time – having mobile email is fantastic because you can put it wherever you are, you don’t have to keep looking at it, you can be there, if you get back to it every few hours or even have a mobile message on it that’s streaming out to let people know you’re aware, you’re taking care of business while you’re taking care of life

H: Ok well we’ll talk a bit more about mobile emailing and the Blackberries that we’re all gazing at these days very very shortly, but don’t forget this is an interactive show, if you’d like to take part, if you’ve got any questions you’d like to put to our guests here today in the studio about response times and how you can increase and improve upon maybe your response times, then do fill in that little box at the bottom of the screen there and just hit the send button, it comes straight through to me here in the studio and I can put the questions to both Jon and to Bryony. Bryony, these little Blackberries there you see on an increasing scale now

B: Yes

H: Are they expensive to get those emails forwarded from your account?

B: You tend to pay for an amount a month, I mean you can get email, mobile email for as little as £5 a month these days, and it’s important to say that I think, cast my mind back about 4 years ago I remember two or three people in the business had a Blackberry, no one else did, and now we have businesses coming to us and deploying Blackberry or mobile email amongst an entire workforce, so all of the engineers at a major utilities company have Blackberry or mobile laptop with 3G data card in, all of the sales force have the ability to work remotely through, you know wireless laptop connectivity or mobile email. This is no longer you know, just reserved for CTOs, CEO, the Board of Directors –

H: These are for just the ordinary workforce I guess?

B: Yes the price has come down, they’re more simple than ever, you can plug and go with the data cards in your laptops, or you can go into store and have email added to your existing phone, you don’t have to go and invest in hardware like a new Blackberry, you can actually have email added to your existing mobiles

H: But that’s getting the email forwarded, can you respond to that email? You know you talk about this two hour response time, can you actually respond from that Blackberry? I guess you can

B: Absolutely. I mean often, like Jon was saying, if you’re in a meeting and the trick is to have your Blackberry on silent, so have it on the table, on sight so it’s not vibrating and it’s not buzzing, and you can see your email come in, and at the end of – at the beginning of a meeting I will say to someone I’m expecting a call, and it’s got – you need to be polite, there’s etiquette, I’m expecting a call, or I’m expecting an urgent email. Let everyone know that you might get up and leave the meeting halfway through. If it comes in, you can see it, you can respond to it, those people can then get on with what they need to do, you’ve not held up a process, that’s the way it should work

H: Are we talking here every workforce? I mean you’re – you run this big agency that deals with football stars and big showbiz stars – are we talking about, you know the little business, the guy whose got the window cleaning business, is it going to improve his business?

J: Email’s not exclusive to any sector now, I think it’s communal garden. I think I quite like it actually, I think it’s, you know – there was a time when you thought the phone is there, it’s all the time it’s there – that’s the world that we – and we transited through that phase, that’s the world that we lived in. I quite like the email bit, because it can sit in your pocket, you can pop it out whenever you want, you can even sit sometimes in conferences you know, you’re not being rude to the speaker, you’re just having a quick look to make sure you haven’t missed anything, move on. Or you forward it to your PA or whatever and she only tells you if there’s something urgent, but at least you’re on it. And obviously, sorry to butt in, the other thing of course, as a parent, they’re – in a very dangerous world that we live in, they’re an absolute essential

H: Ok. Questions are coming through thick and fast now, keep them coming, just fill in that little box at the bottom of your screen and hit the send button. Jeff Munster wants to know “Jon, you must have a few premier league transfer deadline tales to tell. What’s the biggest deal you’ve missed out on through being out of touch?” Can you recite that one?

J: It’s – we did have one in January, last – the last January trading window, I think it was Nigel Quashie going to West Brom – actually this was one that worked, and we – you have to file the paperwork, which is relatively complex and it’s in quadruplet – Football Association Premier League paperwork, it has to be in by 12 midnight on the deadline night, which in the January trading window is January 31, and this was going on during the evening, the player agreed the terms, everything was happening, it was about 10 o’clock, everything was done, had a cup of tea with everybody, everyone left at about quarter to eleven, and we all went our separate ways. At about 11.30 the Premier League objected to one of the conditions in the back page of the contract, the Football League contracts and Premier League are standard until you get to the back pages and then it gets all kind of meaty stuff, and they objected to something. Now we had something like 30 minutes and we’d all dissipated, so we’d all left wherever we were, and if it wasn’t for the fact that we could email each other and get something agreed, the Football Authorities agreed at about five to midnight that we would accept the email that everybody had agreed to this new wording on this new term. That couldn’t have happened even by fax, because you’d have had to have been somewhere

H: Yes, yes. But it’s changed beyond all recognition from the days of fax, from the days of standing by that telephone, before the days of having mobile technology, it’s just unbelievable

J: Or Telex, do you remember you used to put that little ribbon –

H: Yes, yes

J: Tell you who was very good at emailing, Jose Mourinho

H: Oh ok

J: Any time – he had a man with him called Gary who was his sort of right hand man, and every time you wanted Jose he came back within two hours, three hours. Probably two hours actually

H: Is he on your books?

J: No, he was a guy we had to deal with a lot, sad to see him go

H: One here from Delroy Knan, for your Bryony, he wants to know “if I get an email at 6.10 in the evening as I’m going home demanding a detailed pricing plan, what’s the protocol here? Do it that night or in the morning?”

B: I get emails late at night and sometimes if you were to – it’s, I think it’s common sense, it depends on who it’s coming from, whose the supplier, are you going to lose the business if you don’t respond that evening, can it wait until the morning? Most people are absolutely au fait with 6 o’clock, anything beyond 6 it has to be something absolutely important, you know it has to be pressing, things are going to fall over, the world is going to stop if I would say, beyond 6 o’clock and you know if you respond to that, if you don’t respond to that email. Most people will wait till the morning, certainly if the email arrives out of hours I think that’s unacceptable to force a response that late in the day, but like you say you’ve seen it, if you’re lucky enough to have been able to see it that late, you’ve come home from work let’s say, or you’re just about to leave work, one of the things you could do is still leave work, and this is what I do, if I see something that’s come in, I still leave work, go home, you know, see the kids, walk the dog, whatever you need to do, have tea and respond to it when everyone’s in bed later on in the evening and myself and several colleagues manage their work / life balance that way – they’ll log on for an hour about 10.30 at night when they’ve put the kids to bed

H: Other folks will say ok this is all well and good, it’s a bit of a sales push for the mobile phone companies, issuing Blackberries to everybody at whatever price they go for these days, is it – you know we survived before the days of Blackberries and mobile technology – where does it end? I mean it just keeps on going and going doesn’t it?

B: I think the important thing this survey is showing us is there’s been this shift. There are better ways of working, and you I know you can’t force a Blackberry on someone, Blackberry comes with natural benefits, and they’ve been adopted, more widespread because of the benefits that they offer businesses and once they start to become common place you get this tipping point where, you know, they’re no longer just restricted to the higher rationings of business, they prevail throughout and you’re going to fall behind as a business if you don’t respond to that, and whether that is, you I know getting mobile email across your workforce or simple things like, you know we’re talking about being in contact with your email, you know that two hour window potentially being – losing money if you’re away from your email, you can set up a forward to a team of people to deal with these kind of things, you can have an out-of-office which says “I’m out of the office this morning, I’ll be in this afternoon” – there are so many things you can do, you know mobile email is just one of them

H: Absolutely. Ok, someone here from the messaging system, there’s no name to this one in fact, I can’t tell you whose sent this one in – “surely this always on, 24 hour available society is destroying the work / life balance. Shouldn’t we all just turn our phones and Blackberries off at night and deal with it all in the morning. Why can’t businesses be more patient?” That’s a good point

J: But you can

H: Surely you’ve got to have a bit of a shut off time?

J: That’s the point that we’re –

B: That’s the point –

J: That’s the point that we’re making, the Blackberry sits over there, you don’t have – I mean I would, during the course of an evening, I would go and look at it, just in case, but that’s my job, I’m Chief Executive of a group of people so inevitably –

H: You need to know what’s going on

J: There is something there, but I don’t have to

B: No

J: I could forward it to my PA, my COO, various people around me, but we’re in contact. I took my kids, talking socially for a second, which I think that questioner probably referred to, so you can manage quality of life, it doesn’t have to be –

H: It’s not intrusive then?

J: No, the world’s moving on, you can’t stand how you work, your last question was about, you know, can we live without these things, I mean can we live without yellow stick-its and stuff, can we live without videos

H: Yes

J: And DVDs – course we can, but we don’t have to, and the world again moves on

H: Yes

J: And is shifting through it –

H: Moves on

J: It’s the ability to manage the technology round you, and again from a social point of view I took the kids, Christmas before last, to Cambodia, you know we’re stuck out in the middle of Phnom Penh, but the guys in downtown Phnom Penh are watching an Arsenal versus Aston Villa, dressed in Arsenal shirts, and emailing their friend with the latest

H: With the latest details –

J: I mean it’s fantastic really

H: Yes it is

J: We’re living in a global village

H: Yes, absolutely. Samantha Bottomley has been in touch, she wants to know, “hello, great to see a woman giving us advice about telecoms –

J: Absolutely

H: - not just those know-it-all blokes, Bryony what’s the difference between Vodafone and all the other service providers for small business owners?” Thanks very much for getting in touch

B: Well we offer quite a lot for small businesses, we’re first and foremost our heritage is in business. When we were, many moons ago, we sort of started out being first port of call for corporates, we have the largest market share in the corporate sector, in the sort of you know small to medium size businesses. Small businesses when they come to Vodafone, they don’t get what we call IVR but they don’t get this recorded voice –

H: IVR is –

B: That’s a good question

H: I’ve landed that one on you haven’t I?

B: They can email in with that one, it will come to me in a minute

H: Ok

B: But essentially you don’t get the recorded voice, you go straight through to a team of 8 people, and it’s always the same team of 8 so we recognise your phone number and you go through to that person and you say can I speak to Lucy please because I spoke to her last week, and they can say Lucy’s on lunch at the moment, so you get that sort of personal touch. We offer special price plans, there’s businesses advisers in our retail stores who can offer you advice, so there’s plenty of things that you know, if small businesses were looking, they might be – it’s obviously worth shopping around, there’s plenty of websites you can go on to get a balanced view of what’s best for you, but from a small business perspective there’s – it’s the personal touch that’s important, these guys do not have the time, you know mobile is way down on their list of priorities, easy to use and is cost effective

H: Right, another question here, anonymous wants to know very quickly – sorry Jon –

J: I was going to say – individual voice recognition?

B: Interactive –

H: IVR

B: Interactive

J: It was a punt

B: It’s two thirds right, interactive voice recognition

H: Ok, live show, lots of questions coming in, we’ve got to try and squeeze these in before the end if we can – “I run a small software company, struggling to get my mobile sales staff to carry mobile devices as they don’t want to be pestered at all hours. Can I insist that they have these?” I guess

B: Yes if you run a company – but you don’t just give mobile devices to people without a kind of policy in place. You know, a bit like, you don’t want them using, making, racking up huge bills around voice calls, you need what we call mobile phone usage policy, which says, you know you won’t make international calls, you won’t call premium rate numbers, you know and have an agreement about what kind of outside of hours work you’re going to allow them to do, and again it’s about – you can make a judgement call later in the day whether that’s absolutely crucial you get back to somebody, I think – you were saying taking the kids away, you know you can actually leave work early. I can work from home of a morning, I can leave at 3 o’clock, I can still do my work, people who I’m communicating with don’t know where I am or you know what I’m dressed in or whatever, but I am absolutely on the ball with regards to not holding up processes of the working day, because it’s a flexibility –

H: We’re moving on aren’t we with technology, that’s the whole thing

B: Yes

H: One here for you Jon, finally, final question – “isn’t the notion of 9 to 5 dead, and shouldn’t businesses do more to support flexible working?”

J: Yes I think that’s a very good idea, especially, we keep saying this thing, about the global village, we’re working across time zones now, and very often, our company – we’re not a huge company, we’re a reasonable size, but we’re on 3 different continents, 3 different continents, yes, so that – we’ve got 4 different, 5 different time zones in there and it’s nice, it’s good, it’s proper, it’s professional to be able to hold, certainly information exchange between each other outside of 9 to 5, and I’m all for – I don’t – I mean if Bryony worked for me and she wasn’t in that day, she happened to be on her phone and contactable and somewhere else, well that’s fine, as long as she’s doing what she’d doing then I don’t really mind where she is until there’s meetings where we all kind of gather

H: Ok

J: I think the employee has to enjoy their work and has to be able to be flexible, and 9 to 5 one place isn’t perhaps the way forward for the future

H: Ok. So advice very quickly Bryony before we say goodbye to businesses – respond quickly to any emails or calls that come through

B: Yes

H: Within two hours, if you missed the two hour deadline, you’ve lost lots of money?

B: It’s not about supplying them with their answer in two hours, it’s about letting them know that you’ve got their email, so automated response, personalise your voicemail, mobile email, out-of-office with clear instructions of who to speak to if you’re not there

H: Right

B: It’s about flexibility, and all of those things can help you manage your customer, improve your brand, improve at the end of the day the revenue that you’re going to make

H: Ok well we’re out of time I’m afraid, thanks very much for your company, Jon Smith and also Bryony Clow from Vodafone, thank you very much. We’ll see you very soon on the Business Show, bye bye for now