law firm pricing

‘Upfront pricing’: when is a ‘fixed fee’ not a ‘fixed fee’?

I recently read, with interest, an article by Emily McNutt in thepointsguy.com about Uber’s new ‘Upfront pricing’ model in the UK (see ‘Know before you go: Uber rolls out fixed pricing in the UK‘).

In short, as McNutt’s title suggests, Uber have introduced an ‘Upfront’ fixed fee pricing model option for its UK customers.

Wonderful news, and encouragingly McNutt writes:

“…with the introduction of upfront pricing, both the rider and the driver will know the exact cost of their trip before they confirm”.

As someone who enjoys knowing what I’m paying for upfront, this is nothing short of brilliant news (even though I don’t live in the UK nor use Uber 🙂 ).

But…

there’s only one small problem…

which is,

more often than not the rider actually doesn’t know upfront what they are paying for.

Why do I say that?

Well, because Uber UK’s ‘Upfront pricing’ offer comes with four [very small but somewhat important] scenarios under which the agreed Upfront price may change.

McNutt’s article sets these out as being:

  • If the rider adds or removes a stop in their journey;
  • If the final destination is more than one mile away from the originally requested destination;
  • If a detour is taken and the trip is further (40% and 0.5 miles further) and slower (20% and two minutes slower) than originally estimated; or
  • If the trip is at least 40% and 10 minutes slower in duration.

Let’s take a closer look at these:

  • If the rider adds or removes a stop in their journey – okay, on first read this one seems fair. But then I re-read this and saw ‘removes a stop‘; and asked myself: ‘How does removing a step make my fare more expensive (unless the change element here is to reduce the fare – which would be fair go!)?’
  • If the final destination is more than one mile away from the originally requested destination-again, seems fair. But it doesn’t say if this final destination is the ‘original’ final destination. If that is the case, why am I paying more for your miscalculation (see below)?
  • If a detour is taken and the trip is further (40% and 0.5 miles further) and slower (20% and two minutes slower) than originally estimated-not sure what a ‘detour’ is, but having been in the UK just before COVID I can tell you we did a lot of detours!

And so we come to bullet-point #4 – If the trip is at least 40% and 10 minutes slower in duration.

Here I have LOADS of issues.

As McNutt writes:

In other words, if you hit traffic and your trip has been extended by a significant amount of time, the fixed cost will likely increase.

Now that sounds a little wrong. A fixed cost that is allowed to increase because of a time-based element.

Taking a step back here, McNutt writes that:

Uber says that it bases the fixed price based on the best-available route between the rider’s pickup and dropoff points. It uses the expected duration and distance of the trip to come up with the exact figure, while taking into account anticipated traffic patterns and known road closures. Costs for tolls and additional surcharges will also be accounted for in the upfront pricing figure. When demand is high, Uber says it’ll account for that with “dynamic pricing” — a new take on surge pricing.

So Uber totally scopes the project, with information the rider likely doesn’t have access to (Google is good, but that good?), but then says: ‘If we got our calculation wrong, we get the right to readjust’.

To my mind this is essentially a ‘get of prison free’ card for Uber, which is fine – but let’s not then say this is Upfront fixed fee pricing, let’s call it out for what it actually is: a cost estimate at best.

And so why this post after so long away?

Well, no prizes for guessing what other (hint ‘professional services’) industry might have this type of fixed fee pricing mentality!!

As always, the above represent my own thoughts only and would love to hear yours.

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If you are going to discount: ‘Discount with dignity’

In Episode 748 (7 July 2020) of HBR’s Ideacast podcast (23.04), Curt Nickisch interviews Rafi Mohammed, founder of the consulting firm ‘Culture of Profit’, on the topic of ‘Pricing Strategies for Uncertain Times‘.

During the course of the conversation Nickisch states that with COVID-19 service/product providers will be under intense pressure from clients/customers to offer discounts, to which Mohammed replies:

Clearly, in the short-run, you have to offer a discount. And what I would be focused on is what I call discounting with dignity in a manner that doesn’t devalue your product in the long run. And so, that’s really important because once you set a low price, it’s very hard to recover when demand eventually does come back.

And so we turn to how this really important concept applies to law firms

Blind Freddy can tell you that clients are under intense pressure to cut costs. I doubt there is a CFO out there who has not phoned (or even Zoomed) his/her GC and told them to cut costs.

And I suspect there are few GCs out there who have not responded by calling, zooming or even emailing the law firms on their legal panel to tell them to reduce rates by X%.

And, having lived through the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 and the GFC of 2008, I suspect there are few law firms partners who have not passed along this request to their Finance Department with a note to “make it happen“.

But if this sounds familiar, and if a law partner you know would or has done this (*because it is never us*), then you would be missing out on Mohammed’s very powerful ‘discount with dignity‘ concept.

Because, as much a I hate advocating or agreeing to discounts, Mohammed is right:-

If you offer a discount to customers/clients merely because we are going through turbulent (or should I be saying ‘unprecedented’ 🙂 ) times, then what you are really doing is devaluing your service/product in the long term.

Because what you are saying to your customer/client when you unconditionally agree to a discount request of this kind is that “you have been over paying me all this time” – I’m not really worth what you have been paying me.

A Suggested Alternative Approach

Much like scoping in Legal Project Management methodology, when it comes to discounting (and I’m realistic enough to know that there needs to be some consideration of discounting in current times), you need to be considering what you take out of the basket when you offer that discount.

Which is to say it isn’t a ‘like for like’ for less conversation – you don’t get the same for less. If you take 15% off, you take 15% out of the basket. And you look to alternatives to how that can be sourced – either in-house or some other way (including LPOs/ALSPs).

And, if it really does need to be ‘like for like, but for less’ then it needs to come with a risk sharing collar. For example, I will accept 80% of my fees, but if we get past COVID-19 and your share price returns to pre-COVID highs within 6 months of completing this deal, then you agree to pay me 120% of my fees.

And, in the very worst of scenarios, your invoice should include a line item that states the discount being given is a one-off COVID-19 discount (and Mark Stiving, of Impact Pricing, has an interesting thought on this issue).

Regardless of what it is, you do need to do something. You cannot standstill for less. Because we will get past COVID. And in the ‘new world’ (even if that is a world where we merely live with COVID) there will be a ‘new, new normal’. And if you have agreed to discount your rates now without taking anything out of the basket, then what you have actually done is recalibrated your value in the new world.

And you won’t recover from that.

As always, the above just represent my own thoughts and would love to hear your thoughts.

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This week’s photo credit is Chrissie Kremer on Unsplash