Latest / The Retail Podcast / Retail Choreography Imogen Wethered Co Founder & CEO Qudini

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Retail Choreography Imogen Wethered Co Founder & CEO Qudini · The Retail Podcast

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Retail forecast, the global conversation hosted by Alex
0:04
rezze Van Veen. Hello image and how you doing?
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Can you hear me everything? Okay, hi yes, I Canna a great to
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hear you. Brilliant Imaging, for those who
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don't know, you are the CEO and founder of Q Deanie.
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Why don't we start with the story?
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Because I think it's really interesting story and this whole
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series is about empowerment. I think your story sort of just
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shows, you know, if you follow your the path, you can be very
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successful in it. So, it would be lovely if you
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could sort of give us an Overview of how Q dini started,
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great. Yeah.
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I left University and I was kind of interested in setting up a
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business. So I went along to this
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hackathon which was sponsored by a to see if anyone who doesn't
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know what a hackathon is. It's an event where you kind of
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meet up with developers and ideas and designer people over a
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weekend and you come up with an idea and kind of code very basic
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prototype around the table and you kind of pitched at the end
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of the event. So, I went to hackathon and came
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up with this idea for virtual queuing.
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So this concept that you can join a key virtually from your
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phone and get updates about when Your turn.
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So we actually won this hackathon for the most
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commercially viable idea. And as a result we about
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telephonic has accelerator space that they were building in
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London and from that we got accepted.
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So we were kind of the youngest team in the earliest stage idea
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at the time to go through. But we left nine months later
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with a contract with O2 and also won their kind of global tender
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as well and it all just kind of Snowball from there.
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We just kept kind of working with more and more.
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And as clients in the retail space on, how do we improve
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customers who are coming into their store or month service?
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To kind of give them updates. While they're waiting, creating
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kind of a host out to the kind of more professionally, greet
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and manage customers. And a lot of them who are using
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just clipboard and pain at the time.
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And from there, we also, then started building appointment
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booking in, which was something a lot of clients were asking for
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sending be customers, kind of pre-book the time.
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Day visits there was, if we could just go back to.
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Because one of the things that I'm conscious of and the whole
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purpose of doing this is through different experiences.
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I'm, I have the great Fortune of meeting very early in career
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people and obviously, a lot of experienced professionals as
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well. So your mindset about that I
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want to, you know, I'd love to get into business or be an
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entrepreneur and have my own thing.
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How much of that did you? How much of that?
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I mean, where did it come from? Where What was the spark for you
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that made? You want to do this?
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Did you always feel that you could be the CEO and founder?
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We like on the playground? Just you knew that you could be
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the CEO found the how, how, what was the journey?
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What was the, whether the belief come from?
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No, I don't know. That one.
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Actually I wanted to initially go into advertising and then I
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also, when I kind of was always one of the ideas people.
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Yeah. So I wanted to do creative
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advertising, then there's really boring.
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So I just you just sit there all day and think of ideas and I
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like to kind of the execution sign and strategy side.
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So I kind of wanted to try coming up with a business
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because it enables you to be creative but also execute.
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But yeah I mean I guess I was always thinking of like weird
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ideas when I was at University I was like inventing things that
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already existed really like greatest things, I mean maybe it
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was natural. Do you have any words of wisdom?
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Wisdom for someone who maybe who has an idea that, you know, they
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need to act on. Yeah no definitely.
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I mean I think like leaving University age or even instead
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of University starting a business is one of the best
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routes you can go down in terms of if you want to learn skills,
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come up with ideas and execute things.
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And at that age you can't really lose like you don't have any
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like kind of strong responsibilities, so it's
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actually a really good time to start a business.
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If that's something that you want to do, and I Just say go
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for it and I also think it's something that education
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providers should really look at because when you're you have to
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figure stuff out for yourself like for example I was pretty.
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I couldn't really use Excel to start out with and now I'm
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pretty Advanced all just remember kind of searching
4:47
online. It just shows that like the way
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education makes learning things is really boring and actually,
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it's really interesting to learn something.
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When you have, when you have to practically apply it to your own
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eye. Ideas.
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Yeah, and I think most of people in business would say, sometimes
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your success is the success of the people around you, the team
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and how you build it him. I do know that you did have a
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co-founder with you when you, but how have you how have you
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got over that hurdle? Because, you know, I don't know.
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For example, I can imagine fixing here but I don't have any
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coding friends. I don't I can't code or and
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how'd you get over that or how difficult was it to get over
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that element? Oh, well, I'm not ever that I
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have a co-founder who is uh, CT. Oh yeah.
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So definitely. That is that, I mean, for
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starting a tech company, I think that is pretty fundamental
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having someone who understands Tack and is as committed and as
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kind of has as much skin in the game, as you do because I can
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imagine, if you were kind of hiring a CTO and someone who's
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kind of leaves every three years, it would be a lot harder.
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Yeah. And having that knowledge is is
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really key and there's Lots of ways you can meet people.
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So, for example, there's kind of technique UPS as hackathons are
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really good way to meet people, as well as I think, for kind of
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young Founders, starting out applying to something like
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something, like an accelerator, like wire or entrepreneur first,
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which actually helps kind of match people and fun.
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Businesses is a really good way to start.
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Oh, well, cool. In terms of just moving on a
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little bit in terms of going back to actually our first
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Encounter which was all about buy online, pick up in store and
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building efficiency, I just, and that was 2013.
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I think so. Yeah.
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In 2012, right Eugenie? Yes, yeah, okay.
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So so it's been going for a fair while.
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I mean, the evolution of buy online, pick up in store, to
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Virtual queue management and I also saw on your website, your
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also have a sort of a proposition for For luxury in
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terms of appointment booking as well.
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For people who sort of maybe don't know the area or don't
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understand the friction or the challenges specifically during
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covid. Can you just talk about the
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problem and then potentially how you've sort of tackled solving
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those problems? Yeah.
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So for sure so I guess when I was kind of roomy when I when we
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first met Ali I was kind of trying to explain to people, you
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can have customers join the queue from outside of the When
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you can message them when, when it's a turn and we had a couple
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of retailers up kind of take on that method of the customer
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joining in a queue by their phone.
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But most of them actually, just letting them join the queue by
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host or potentially in Europe by a kiosk, because we've been
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very, very wary of queuing systems and whether customers
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will use in the like them, but it's covid.
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We've just seen this kind of mass adoption, amongst
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customers, and retailers of this kind of scanning, a QR code to
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join the queue and staying updated.
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One in weight as well as for click and collect like, checking
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in from your phone, or by scanning, a QR code, from the
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car park, so that you can wait in your car and get your order
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delivered. And then the appointment booking
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is kind of a little bit more mainstream that's been going on
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for a while, but it's becoming bigger.
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And so when you drive by pickup service, it's something that you
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guys are there. Any retailers, are experiment,
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specific ones, you can talk about because I find food we've
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rolled out with dick our phones, They were actually the first,
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and before they even open their stores, fully, they started
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opening their stores just for cooking collect.
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If you go to Dixon's conference tour, you can check in from your
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order confirmation email and you'll get a texting.
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Someone's looking for your order, someone finds the order,
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and then just drops it in the boot of the boot of your car.
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So you can literally kind of drive in and out of store,
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without getting out of your car. Wow.
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And they did you get any sort of customer to get any stats on?
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I don't know the the Improvement on customer Journey or what?
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How do you measure the success of these initiatives?
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Yeah, so I guess for click and collect, it's more about kind of
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loyalty and getting them to, come back to your omni-channel,
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whether that's or online. Yeah.
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And we've definitely seen kind of increases in loyalty and
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amazing feedback from customers saying they will definitely use
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the service. Again, they've tweeted about it
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online. For example, some of the best
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ones we've seen our with the queuing and appointment booking.
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The install entry or install Services?
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Yeah. Well we reduce some of our
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clients walkouts rates by 62% and that's purely just by giving
9:37
kind of customers an estimate of how long they're waiting and
9:40
wears it to when you're waiting for a tube or bus.
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And when they have the information issue in the weight
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feels a lot shorter than when you're just sitting there
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waiting. And you don't know when the next
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bus or train is coming. Absolutely yeah.
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Okay frustrating. Yeah.
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So yeah. So it's that and And then we've
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helped them to. We've helped one retailer to
10:01
increase average, spend by 33 percent just because of the
10:05
better customer experience. And a lot of our clients also
10:08
seeing kind of a 10% store conversion, increase through
10:10
queuing and appointments because they're having giving better
10:13
service them and customers and one language and it is that
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specifically during covid-19 paprika covid, that was pre
10:20
covid during covid. I mean it's been pretty much the
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same like, much higher retention there.
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Anything being that obviously customers have been avoiding
10:31
stores in any way. You can drive them to store
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through appointment booking is important.
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And then also, once if customers do come in to store, making sure
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they feel kind of safe and confident throughout their visit
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so that they will come back. So, as a couple of really
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interesting, stats are also with appointment booking that one of
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our clients has found that sixty percent of customers who booked
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an appointment have never been to the stores before.
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So it's that acquiring new new customers that don't really
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interact with that business. And another thing we're seeing
11:02
is a massive up taking virtual services, so retailers, bring
11:07
kind of remote server so if I want to buy something online but
11:10
I'm not quite sure your mean for me it's the buyer or to drop off
11:14
the site. But now there's another option
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where it's like, okay because you can just click and book an
11:18
appointment and speak to someone in a store in a contact center
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about that product and this is obviously been cattle are like
11:26
covid been a catalyst Yes. But I think it gets them
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required the whole time or at least we surveyed people and
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Millennials and gen Z customers with three times more likely
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than Baby Boomers to want virtual service do.
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It's definitely kind of a generational thing rather than
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just a covid thing. Yeah, I can.
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Well I imagine to, I mean, that in my mind there's like the
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Instagram generation that doesn't necessarily need to feel
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safe, but just once a digital experience, but then there is a
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generation and, you know, that of people myself included You
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want to feel a little bit safer when you go in and knowing that
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you've got that space and that time I think it absolutely does
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help that you you go in and then you feel like, okay, this is my
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time, this is my space in this environment or in terms of
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booking. I'm glad you mentioned the
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research that you did because I did see that on LinkedIn.
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Was there any other sort of key findings that you found and was
12:22
there any? I can't remember an apologetic
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was there one in the US and one in the UK or Did I ever got that
12:28
wrong? Yes, that's correct.
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So we did a 2000 consumer survey.
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Just as Lockdown had started asking people, kind of, which
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stores they had been avoiding how they felt that tricky,
12:39
collect, and also how they felt about virtual service with
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retailers. Yeah.
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And the main thing was that the more customers need a store, the
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more they wanted virtual service from it.
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So like even grocery retailers, a high proportion of customers
12:53
wanted virtual service from it. And And yes, it basically one
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average. I think it was about 56 or 60%
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of people want to Virtual servers from all these different
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types of retailers and and we broke it down by different
13:07
Capital. Yeah, the other thing was that
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56% of people plan to use, click and collect more.
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So, even kind of amongst the Baby Boomers were only kind of
13:19
7% will use it frequently outside of covid, right?
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About sit 56%, were saying that they would be more likely to
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use. It during and covid and also
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just the different types of stores that people were finding
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it harder to avoid was very interested in staying.
13:37
So obviously grocery stores, people find it harder to avoid,
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but Banks people find it very easy, to avoid mum children and
13:45
toy retailers, really, really important to the customers that
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use them. And they found them hard to
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avoid them, which I thought was very interesting as well.
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Yeah, I know our little toy. A shopping.
13:58
Turnham green has a has a has a queuing system, which I don't
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know if it's yours, but I know they have a queuing system and
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have you have you expanded into the u.s. now?
14:07
Ask you Deanie Stateside as well or you predominantly uk-based?
14:13
Yes, we have actually, so we're working with a number of
14:17
retailers across their Us stores and and really like, because
14:22
we're working now with a lot of kind of global brand.
14:24
So we have the system, Student translated into all sorts of
14:30
different parts of the world, like Korea, Japan all over
14:34
Europe as well. So, that's very exciting.
14:36
Let's just bring it back into again in terms of the journey
14:39
that you have gone on as a person.
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So, how how do you feel now? Almost, almost 10 years down the
14:45
line and the, the next 10 years or five years, where would you
14:52
like to be? Well, I guess I'm probably only
14:55
really thinking kind of too. Years ahead every-- every year,
14:58
every couple of years was kind of have that your big kind of
15:01
two to three year growth plan. And we've got some pretty
15:06
ambitious targets to me based on kind of how well things have
15:10
gone because of covid and how much our technology has been
15:14
adopted. So we're really just helping to
15:16
hoping to grow from there and I'll main goal right now is to
15:19
grow more internationally real. So to convert all the UK
15:23
retailers who are now starting to understand what virtual
15:26
queuing is. And How it's spent in official
15:28
to them. Yeah, I've noticed that you
15:31
obviously are focused on luxury. What, how does luxury play into
15:35
the QD new world? Yes.
15:38
So luxury has become bigger and bigger and of the last year,
15:42
even we started working with Aiko stores internationally a
15:46
few years ago. So they were getting really,
15:48
really high traffic of customers all over the world coming into
15:51
by their kind of heated, tobacco devices.
15:56
And We've just seen and because you've got kind of Premium
16:00
Stones where people want to have a premium waiting experience.
16:04
And if there's a queue, it's really not attractive.
16:06
And also people want to be able to book time, they're going to
16:08
spend a lot of money so they want to be able to have more
16:11
detailed service. So we're just seeing one more
16:15
tip with retailers that were working with internationally.
16:19
Yeah, I noticed I don't know how long back but the word
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choreography started to appear. X2 2 in terms of retail
16:29
choreography, what does that mean?
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Can you expand on? What how, what's your
16:34
interpretation or whether what has that being interpreted?
16:38
Yes, sir, retail choreography, is this kind of category
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concept? We created to better explain
16:44
what it is that we do because we built the queuing system in the
16:47
booking system. And people kept kind of thinking
16:50
we were just a curing system so we wanted to come up with
16:52
something, it kind of encapsulated what we were doing
16:55
and also where we wanted to take Kitty knee over the coming years
17:00
and it's all about, it's all about kind of connecting your
17:05
experience, your operations, and your data and holistic Lee
17:09
managing those whether that's related to mostly around stores.
17:12
But also some of your online offering and we noticed kind of
17:16
no one was yet kind of incorporating the concept of
17:20
experience of operations and data and how we tell us should
17:22
be looking at those holistically and all that one, kind of a
17:26
framework. We've been creating my starting
17:29
to create a set of Tools around how to use retail choreography
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as a concept, not just relating to keaney initiatives, but any
17:35
process or any tool that you implement across your business,
17:39
I got you and I presume the Data Insights on top of the stuff
17:43
that retail is traditionally used to gain.
17:46
You know. I do for counters infrared
17:48
cameras whatever they are that must be phenomenal.
17:51
Like a know what percentage upgrade that they're getting on
17:55
data on? Footfall physically coming into
17:59
their stores. Yes.
18:02
So because obviously retailers a lot of them will have football
18:06
and they have sales but what has happened between the door and
18:08
the till is not very well known. So we help to bridge that Gap by
18:13
showing things like, how long customers are waiting?
18:16
Who's speaking to them and how long that service is taking one
18:19
of the outcomes? What's the survey feedback?
18:22
If they booked an appointment whereabouts in the country?
18:26
Did they book their From so we can give the lot more insight.
18:30
Yeah. If we just step away from from
18:33
the business and go back to your role as a CEO, what I mean this
18:37
has been a really tough time for everyone in.
18:40
You know I put my hand up for myself as well and it feels like
18:44
you know when when you heard about this news of work from
18:49
home again you thinking oh my God, are we getting ready for
18:51
another lockdown? How has it been managing a team
18:54
through? This was there?
18:56
I mean, yeah. Yeah, how how did the kid Nene
18:59
team managed? And were there any tips and
19:01
tricks for keeping morale up during this time?
19:06
I think one thing was that we've always been set up virtual
19:09
working, because we've always been quite flexible.
19:12
Yeah, whereas I've had some friends at companies and they
19:15
just weren't set up a virtual working and that was a huge
19:17
change, but it's definitely hard to kind of keep up morale.
19:24
Like, I think my biggest concern is that you don't know, When
19:27
someone's unhappy that you can't just see that you can't get
19:29
those visual cues that you would get in an office.
19:31
So it's all about kind of just calling people, we implemented
19:35
daily stand-up. So every morning kind of our
19:38
sales and marketing team will connect in the development team,
19:41
have a separate call. And actually, we've found that
19:44
we've been able to do, there's a lot more regularly than when we
19:47
were in the office. And you've got people kind of
19:48
there but not there and as well as kind of on Monday, we do an
19:53
all-hands meeting on zoom. And then on Friday we do kind of
19:57
What did we achieve this week and drinks?
20:00
And we've also started to send people kind of little gifts when
20:03
we win deals just said kind of feel kind of loved and also
20:09
reward for all the hard work they're doing.
20:11
Yeah I think the main thing for us there is we've just been so
20:15
busy and that's been really really kind of motivating for
20:18
everyone although definitely tiring.
20:21
It's also been so exciting. How do you I mean with the covid
20:26
research that you It and just sort of looking at the generic
20:31
retail Market specifically in the UK, what's your view on the
20:38
or what are you seeing in terms of the indications?
20:41
Are we? Because there's this been, this
20:43
whole view of a bounce-back, people will just go back to
20:46
their behaviors, which I think happened in over the summer,
20:50
June, July August. But do you have any views on,
20:53
you know, the future of I say, the future of the next Six to 12
20:57
months and and how you think specifically coming up to
21:02
Christmas if we maintain this trajectory of not full lockdown,
21:07
but partial lockdown, how do you have a view?
21:11
Well, I can talk about how some of our clients to see why, which
21:15
is kind of inform the way that I see it is that I guess, cause
21:20
like a lot of businesses will be putting in these new systems and
21:24
processes to manage customers and to Experience.
21:28
I think kind of things like the master and the hand sanitizers
21:31
will disappear. Yeah.
21:33
When kind of the pandemic ever ends but things like the
21:37
processes and managing customers and and some of those kind of
21:43
Investments should swing. That's what some of our clients
21:45
think, like, a lot of them had things that queuing appointment
21:48
booking on the roadmap already. Yeah, it was really just a
21:52
catalyst for it. I think the virtual Services
21:56
thing will also remain. Maine.
21:57
Because our research showed that, that is something that
21:59
customers want. So that will be really
22:01
interesting to see how that transforms the world.
22:04
And then from a kind of working perspective, a lot of business
22:08
owners are talking about whether they just have kind of go fully
22:11
remote and have one day a week in the office or a base, which,
22:16
to be honest, I was quite opposed to initially, but I'm
22:19
coming around more and more to it just by seeing how effective
22:22
people are. Yeah, when they don't have to
22:24
travel, obviously kind It reduces pollution of it which is
22:30
great. And I don't know if you saw the
22:33
stats that like premature babies had massively reduced this year.
22:37
Wow, because people are just common and less stressed.
22:41
And from my perspective, I 100% feel less stressed because
22:46
you've got so many fewer kind of commitments and ways that you
22:49
have to split your time which I found very, very stressful being
22:52
like should I go to this event or should I stay at my desk and
22:54
work? What's going to be better?
22:57
In terms of wrapping up and closing any other words of
23:03
wisdom that you would have for female Founders or female CEOs
23:07
that are just thinking about starting up, or should I
23:10
shouldn't I? Yes.
23:13
So I would say, definitely, D to raise kind of money.
23:28
I believe there is a 1% increase in funding and yes, you this is
23:32
like that. There's more well companies as a
23:35
kind of pattern recognition and there's a personal company.
23:37
So we need more female Founders to build businesses and sell
23:41
them and make them so that there's kind of more money being
23:46
invested into female businesses. I'd say definitely kind of asked
23:51
but don't be afraid to ask people for help and everyone
23:54
actually really does want to help out young founders.
23:57
He's a particular female Founders, and that's something
23:59
really, really need to be able to leverage when you, when
24:03
you're starting out, please go of them.
24:08
Yeah. I I agree.
24:10
I do believe the world needs more Founders and female
24:12
Founders. I think parities always a good
24:15
thing to go for and I and specially from an investment
24:18
perspective, I think the world would be a better place it
24:21
region. Thank you for carving some time
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out. I know it's hectic, being a CEO
24:26
and running your own. Our own team and running a
24:28
business. I really do appreciate you
24:30
giving us your time, and I look forward to seeing the growth of
24:33
Q Deanie. Thank you so much and it's been
24:36
great. Thank you.
24:40
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