A View from the Top: Ashley Schofield, the new CEO of giffgaff

It all started ten years ago when they were offered a free introductory karate lesson. He was sceptical, but his wife said she was going. He said: “You’re not going to karate without me.” Now both Ashley Schofield, the brand new CEO of giffgaff, and his wife are black belts. I imagine that if there were ever any major disagreements in the Schofield household, it would be like Mr and Mrs Smith in there. Fortunately they are into yoga too, so it’s reasonably zen and harmonious.

“The first time you see a black belt in action, you think it’s impossible,” says Ash. “But you gradually work your way up, get one more belt, then another. And you realise, nothing is impossible. Time and again that has proven to be true for me.”

Schofield is 48, but boyish, and I’m going to have to call him “Ash” because everyone else does. There’s no “Mr Schofield” at giffgaff. He was born and brought up in Manchester. He’s given up playing football, but he is still a keen Man United supporter. He’s gone back to Old Trafford this season to watch his “red heroes” with his brother. “I reckon I chose the wrong season.,” he says.

Ash has done some rough old jobs in the past. His first one was working in a chemicals factory where he was filling bottles with chemicals. “The gloves would melt in the first hour, but you weren’t allowed a new pair until the end of the week”. And the worst of it was “it ruined my Doc Martens”.

He did business studies, got a job and volunteered for “unit costing training”. He had no idea what he was signing up for, but discovered he had a talent for presenting. “I was quite shy as a kid but I found I could make it quite likeable,” he says.

So he went back to college and focused on marketing. In 1999 he joined Martin Dawes who did the billing for BT Cellnet (now O2). BT Cellnet bought them out. Then he got the job of persuading Vodafone customers to go over to BT Cellnet. “It was all-out war. I learned a lot in that year. About how to offer the best deals.”

Then it was all about providing a service for Nokia phones. Now, at giffgaff, it’s about the data. They don’t provide a line, they provide airtime, or “the experience”.

“Our members are more data-hungry,” says Ash. Notice that he says “members” not “customers”. “Calling people ‘customers’ sounds too transactional.”

Key words are “mutuality” and “proximity”. The name giffgaff is (I’m told) an old Scottish word meaning “mutual giving”.

The giffgaff ethos (and you are never allowed to use a capital letter, even if it is at the start of a sentence) is reminiscent of the old cooperative approach, but given a new twist. They have no glossy shops. It’s all online, which keeps costs down.

But this approach also opens up the opportunity for sharing information and creating a community. “Most queries can be answered by other members,” says Ash. “You type in a question and someone will come back at you in 90 seconds. It’s a lot more charming to have your query answered by someone who’s like you.”

They don’t do contracts either. “We want people to stay because they want to stay,” says Ash. You go from month to month on the basis of a series of “goody bags” where members decide for themselves what they want.

Members also come up with good ideas on how to make it better. There is an “online ideas lab”. Some have designed and built apps. One guy, Ian Moreland, came up with a Windows-interface app. “We liked it so much we gave him a job. You don’t get that with customers.”

I begin to see why it is they’ve won so many awards from Which and uSwitch. Everyday they check their “net promoter score”, the metric of recommenders versus detractors. Currently they are on 67, which is right up there with Amazon and Netflix. They’re aiming for 70-something. “It’s not what you say about yourself, it’s what others say about you that matters.”

I met Ash at the new giffgaff HQ in Uxbridge. This is the next generation of office environments, with a fun, creative vibe. You get the impression that they encourage individuality. While I was strolling around the place, a woman riding a scooter while balancing a drink in one hand stopped to say hi. You cannot make it up. “It’s all about connectivity,” says Ash. “So we’ve created the space for that.”

Every Monday morning everyone gets together for a football team-style huddle. A team that is now 250-strong. “It’s like Woodstock in here every Monday,” says Ash. Newbies have to get up and say something about themselves in front of the assembled throng. Which could be terrifying, I imagine, but seems to go well.

Ash reckons that giffgaff is different, possibly unique. “I hear lots of people say, ‘We’re going to be like giffgaff’ – but I’m not seeing it. If you run out of data (from a ‘reserve tank’), we give you more. Who else does that?”

They also sponsor TV shows. They’ve done The Voice on BBC, but next up is a new reality television series, The Circle, on C4. The “bumper” – the segment between the show and the commercial – gives them the opportunity to “hero” members. I admit I haven’t come across “hero” as a verb before, but I think it means that members are going to be appearing on screen, and it’s cheaper than hiring actors.

Ash is going for a second black belt in October. And he rides one of two Vespas to work, one dating from 1964, the other from 1971. “Lots of other machines would do the job. But the Vespa is so likeable. That’s like us. Lots of other places you can get airtime from. But we aim to be likeable.”