Sir Richard Harpin

but unlikely that a skilled technician going out to the home or the office is going to be taken away through AI.

And certainly in the UK, we've got a real shortage of skilled tradespeople, what you would call pros.

And so I see AI shutting down call centers and releasing a lot of people's lives that have been doing boring, tedious answering of customer calls that a voice bot can very easily do more efficiently and cheaper.

And...

releasing those great human lives to go and work in people's homes and offices and do worthwhile things that are offering great customer service.

Yeah, I would say it's all around AI applications that would do the quotations.

that would do the invoicing and chasing those invoices and the payments, would be doing the routing and the scheduling of work.

I think that's going to make a tremendous effect on the efficiency of a business so that the major cost will be the cost of the technician going out to the customer home.

And we all want to be able to get somebody out to do all of these repairs, to assemble our flat pack furniture rather than trying to do it ourselves.

So releasing more people to get them into doing services to the home is going to really help.

Yeah, I would recommend second mover advantage.

So look for AI applications that other business owners are using where it's a proven case and it's working, it's efficient, it's low cost.

Don't be bleeding edge and take AI applications or try and develop your own versions.

Copy what others are doing because it's working and it's having a big effect.

Jump on the bandwagon, but only where you can see that a similar business is getting a big efficiency gain.

No, I'm invested in a business called Checker Trade in the UK.

We have over 50,000 pros on the marketplace.

And we've developed software that is called Trade More.

And it's available for all of our pros.

And it is literally AI as an app that helps a pro to run their business.