Do NOT Make This Stupid Marketing Mistake

My wife, Kay, and I have a Valentine's Day tradition. Well, actually, it's MY tradition. Kay gets the benefit, which is very okay.

Early in our marriage I decided it would be romantic to give her a rose for every Valentine's Day we've been together. This year marked our 24th, so I needed to get her two dozen red roses. (Admittedly, 24 years ago, I didn't think this far ahead."

Seems simple enough, right? Well, no. You see I also give our daughter, Kelly, one single rose, as part of the tradition. So I really needed 25 roses - 24 for Kay and one for Kelly.

I went to the 1-800-Flowers website to get my roses. I could order six roses, twelve roses, and 24 roses, but I couldn't find a way to order 25 roses. So I sent a query to customer service. The next day I received the following response:

Thank you for contacting us.

We appreciate your inquiry. In order to better assist you, please be so kind to contact us at 800-230-3082. One of our representatives will gladly assist you placing your order. We look forward to serving your gifting needs in the near future.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us at the address listed below.

Sincerely,

Mynor Sosa
Sales and Service Specialist
custservice@1800flowers.com

Cool, they can help me! I called the number Mynor gave me. A helpful operator came on the line and my conversation went something like this:

Operator: How may I help you today?

Me: I'd like to order 25 red roses for Valentine's Day.

Operator: I'm sorry, sir, we don't sell roses in that quantity.

Me: But I received an email from Mynor saying you could help me.

Operator: No, I'm sorry, sir, we don't sell 25 roses.

Me: May I speak to a supervisor?

Supervisor: How may I help you?

Me: I'd like to order 25 red roses.

Supervisor: I'm sorry, sir, but we don't have that quantity for sale.

Me: Why not? That's how many I want.

Supervisor: We can only sell what you see on the website.

Me: Well, how about we do it this way? I'd like to order 24 red roses. Can I do that?

Supervisor: Yes, of course, you can.

Me: Okay, I want to order 24 red roses. And then I would like to order one more red rose and you just put it in the box with the other 24.

Supervisor: We can't do that.

All right, you know how this ended. I did NOT order any roses from 1-800-Flowers. I DID get my 25 roses for Kay and Kelly. And I now get to rant about the lack of intelligence on 1-800-Flowers part.

This is an example of what I call "Post Office Regulations in an Internet World." Why create stupid hurdles and rules that irritate customers? I don't care whether this is inconvenient for YOU to have someone go get one single rose and stick it in a box with 24 others. I'm happy to pay for that odd order. But then your rules weren't designed to make it easy for me, were they?

Hey, 1-800-Flowers! You know that operator and supervisor who said no to me? Here's something you might want remember: THEY are overhead. I am profit. In marketing, everything walks the talk.

This whole thing reminded me of the restaurant scene in Five Easy Pieces. If you haven't scene Jack Nicholson go ballistic, you're going to love it:

Comments

[Steve Markowski]

Steve,

Shop globally, buy locally.

I hope your local florist could count to 25.

Love to all.

Steve

[Sonya Carmichael Jones]

Great story.

Your negative experience with 1800fowers.com increases their risk of even more profit loss as I won't be shopping there or recommending their products or services to anyone else.

Small businesses, take note: Flexibility is key to building customer loyalty and bottom line growth.

[Anita]

Hey Steve,
I was pretty disturbed by this so I sent 1-800-flowers your article letting them know i now would think twice about ordering through their company. This was their response:
*********************************************

Dear Carlos,

Thank you for contacting us.

We appreciate you feedback, thanks for all the information you provides us and we are willing to take this in into consideration for the future. Thanks again, an we hope to serve your gifting needs in the future.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us at the address listed below.

Sincerely,

Elena Haro
Sales and Service Specialist
custservice@1800flowers.com

***************************************

I had to email them again. My name is not Carlos. lol
Thanks for your awesome blogs. I have them sent directly to my work email.

Have a great day,
Anita Carlos-Reyes

[Kay Miller]

Glad you didn't let 1-800-Flowers ruin your awesome tradition! Kelly and I love it too much. :)

[Steve Miller]

Hey Carlos - I mean ANITA!

Can't believe they sent this uncaring response AND then didn't even call you by your correct name!

Unbelievable. I might have to blog about that!

[Leandro Malatesta]

Interesting story and I have one more point:
You had to write an e-mail in order to get the help and they send you an answer with a telephone nukmber? Why then they ask you to write that e-mail, why don't they put the assistance number right away, it's faster and easier when you can talk directly to a person instead of writing e-mails...unless you reach that robotic answers that surely won't give you the alternative you want....
Take care@!

[Jason Williamson]

Shop Local, end of story.

[Carl Weaver]

Steve,

I am glad you found someone with enough fingers and toes to get the order right and count to 25. This type of customer service story amazes me, yet it happens all the time. The Web gives us an opportunity to do things differently and change how we do business.

The problem as I see it is that part of our culture is "cannot" instead of "can." I don't know when it got this way. A lot of small businesses are typically happy you come in the door and are happy to help and serve. Lots of big businesses act like they are doing you a favor to take your money. What we need is more homestyle approach to customer service paired with big business ability to get the job done.

Great clip. That's a great example of poor customer service. They may as well have been in McDonalds.