The Napoleonic Warning

Maybe Napoleon was right, just two hundred years ahead of the curve.

A failure to “attend to the sea and commerce”, he warned, “will yet be your ruin as a nation. You were greatly offended with me for having called you a nation of shopkeepers….no man of sense ought to be ashamed of being called a shopkeeper.”

As the seas rise, it is our ability as shopkeepers that stands between us and our ruin as a nation.

Investment and innovation in our infrastructure can unlock the higher margin, lower carbon products and services which make up the net-zero transition. Yet it is in the real life experiences of consumers and communities where the carbon reductions and rates of return from Whitehall policies and City business plans spring from the page to the embodied world.

The Saudi Arabia of wind or the Silicon Valley of climate tech are inspiring models but neither place is famed for the most important asset in determining the pace, scope and success of the energy transition: trust.

Decarbonising heat and transport calls for new modes of connecting, thinking and being. A new infrastructure of trust as much as one of turbines or tech. Retailing is where penetration and engagement will be won or lost. Developing, earning and maintaining trust will create the conditions for sustainable new markets, yet the current state of retail doesn’t bode well for delivery.

In part that comes from an historic underappreciation of the role of retail. It has often been viewed in terms of revenue collection and revenue assurance. Too often the main focus on customer operations has been around opex and on the perceived competitive advantage of minimising contacts, of reducing costs through outsourcing and offshoring and of building journeys to deliver efficiencies. In a more static environment (and with a price cap that only assigns around £20 per customer per year to service) that’s an understandable mindset to have.

But it’s a more difficult one to hold when we zoom out to today’s wider challenges and the road to net-zero. Fuel poverty and affordability issues, the crisis of mental welfare and the importance of diversity and inclusion all trend towards more complex, more engaged and more personal customer service.

The success of both individual businesses and the collective net-zero enterprise depend on a very different type of customer engagement to build trust and to reduce barriers to the widespread adoption of new products and services. In turn this makes new demands of the skill set and resilience of customer operations and of how they are conceived, designed, led, measured and valued by executive teams.

Retail delivers so many of the moments of truth in execution and is one of the natural homes for conversations with consumers around the future. It is here that the system as a whole will build or erode the trust assets needed for economic growth and environmental recovery.

Strengthening that interface, that bond between the uncertainties of the present and a promising future, needs a collective shift in mindset and approach from industry, from regulator and from government. How might recognising the power and value of trust challenge us?

For industry there are the risks and opportunities as consumers navigate an innovative and unfamiliar range of new offers and services. Technology opens up the scope and repertoire of retailers and consumers alike, but only if it’s accompanied by that trust mindset shift. It suggests a whole business effort rather than a short-term, drag and drop fix. Less about extracting operational efficiencies than how to enable and recast engagement.

As supply chains and service delivery journeys fragment, execution and experience must target simplicity and consistency co-ordinated across a range of partners. Execution that turns worthy but leaden intent into golden outcomes and trustworthy retailers.

For the regulator a trust lens clarifies the importance of connections, culture and capability of the ecosystem. How can regulation grow confidence in the system? What challenges, competences and concepts from inside and outside the sector might consciously build trust infrastructure? How can a regulator best champion trust and service innovation and create the optimum conditions for delivery?

And where can government help to create a clear and consistent narrative around the industry which promotes and encourages trust from consumers and communities? Customer service in utilities and essential services is difficult and demanding by its nature. Complex questions of social welfare and social policy are effectively in the hands of industry to deliver.

Creating a retail interface that consumers can trust will assure investors on the sustainability of new markets. Aligning narrative and actions is important. There are limits to the capacity and responsibility of energy companies, and retailers in particular, in addressing wider economic and social challenges.

Trust will be the biggest asset or constraint in realising the economic and environmental opportunities ahead. The interface between consumers and products which retail represents is where it is predominantly created or destroyed.

We need a trusted gateway to the future. And in building a better, greener Britain we owe something to one of the great European super-state architects – Napoleon Bonaparte. For he reminds us of the importance and power of a nation of shopkeepers.