ONLINE JONATHAN BURRAGE
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4walls was keen to get the views of Larson-Juhl managing director Jonathan Burrage on how the business is adapting in the evolving digital world.
Larson-Juhl recently conducted a customer survey. What did it tell you about how customers are embracing the digital world? Our industry has been slow to embrace technology but we are now seeing more and more customers see the advantages of digitising parts of their operations. Whilst the skill and creativity of a bespoke framer will forever be a human interaction, smart phones and tablets enable customers to focus more time on the consumer and less on the back office processes. Whether it’s an integrated POS system, accounting software or simply online diaries, customers are finding ways to free up time spent on activities that do not drive sales.
To what extent is Larson-Juhl now a digital business? We have made significant investment to accelerate the digitisation of our business over the past 12 months. We have listened to what our customers need and adapted many of our systems and services to ensure we meet, if not exceed, their expectations. Does this mean we have developed everything requested from our customers? Absolutely not. Does this mean the digitisation process is complete? Quite the opposite. This is an evolving, never ending process of improvement for us and there
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is so much more to come in the coming months. This is just the start of our journey. Our ability to deliver great quality products and services at competitive prices requires a highly committed team of individuals across all parts of our business. For us, like our customers, digitisation means we spend less time on back office processes and more time focussed on the needs of our customers.
Please can you take us through what this covers? The majority of our customers have a simple need from Larson-Juhl. Great quality product at a competitive price available when they want it. Furthermore, they want to know that they don’t have to wait for a ‘milk round’ delivery that only delivers to them once a week on a predefined day. The majority of our customers wait less than 36 hours to receive an order. In many cases, it’s less than 24 hours. That’s a service that the average consumer expects from Amazon! (I appreciate that delivery times have been significantly longer during the coronavirus lockdown but I would hope our customers understand the reasons for this). Our website is the most visible example to our customers of the improvements we have made over the past year. This is the easiest and quickest way to place an
order with Larson-Juhl. Our customers can access live information on all the products they need at their fingertips. Favourite lists can be set up making it easier to find those items that are ordered week in and week out. Furthermore, for those ordering a long list of items, there is an ‘Instant Order Upload’ enabling users to import a single CSV file in a matter of seconds. Behind the scenes, we have streamlined the way web orders reach our warehouse. Arriving quicker than any other orders, we have a dedicated team picking goods within seconds of the customer clicking the “PAY” button on our website. Beyond ordering online, our website provides a hub for customers to review all aspects of their financials with Larson-Juhl. Statements, invoices, receipts, credit notes (to name a few) can be accessed and downloaded within a matter of seconds. It’s complete account control at your fingertips.
And also the reasons for the decision to move to totally digital communications? Our primary goal has been to deliver a frictionless experience for our customers. That doesn’t mean we aren’t available to see people face-to-face or talk over the phone. It means that customers have access to systems that streamline their
