Chris McCann didn’t have to eat any grubs during his stint on reality television. He didn’t gut and remake the inside of a home. And he didn’t have to jump through flaming hoops, or risk getting voted off the island.
All he had to do was carry out a variety of low-level tasks 1-800-Flowers.com, the floral delivery firm he runs with big brother Jim.
Turns out that Chris, the company’s president and COO, had no idea how to put together floral arrangements. And his stint at one of the company’s candy operations resembled nothing so much as Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz trying to keep up with a hyperactive conveyer belt.
“I don’t think he’ll last in this business,” opined one of McCann’s co-workers, after a particularly bad day at a company retail location.
Actually, he should continue in it quite nicely, in no small part to his willingness to rediscover his company’s roots. Lisa Hendrikson, 1-800-Flowers’ VP of retention and customer experience, outlined a six-part strategy the McCanns have implemented geared toward making sure the company keeps the same ability it has to listen to its customers the McCanns had when they were running a floral shop in New York City.
What did that six-part strategy consist of?
Listen
This included actively soliciting feedback from customers. The company uses a mixture of both purchaser and recipient surveys, as well as a focus group of 200 customers. It also actively engages customers with a “Question of the Day” feature. And all employees are required to spend time every week monitoring phone calls, even though only 20% of the company’s business comes in through the telephone (with most of the remainder generated by its Web site).
Diagnose
Look at best sellers and determine how they got to be that way. Follow trends in customer services issues such as product returns. Note low-converting pages, as well as those which lead to shopping cart or site abandonment. Take the time to review qualitative findings, such as comments in surveys and chat sessions.
React
Reach out to customers – especially unsatisfied ones. Unhappy customers, notes Hendrikson, will talk to their friends…but so will those that have had their issues resolved. When there are issues, develop hypotheses and action plans. The company noted that 10% of customers purchasing spring roses were unhappy. “They didn’t realize [spring roses] were a smaller bud,” Hendrikson said. The company is considering whether to pull the item, use different imagery, or otherwise tweak the explanation of the product. Regardless of customer concerns, 1-800-Flowers has assigned clear ownership of every problem.
Monitor
As part of its success evaluation, the company examines a variety of metrics, including those based on customers, projects and revenue. It has also established metrics-based goals which have time frames attached to them.
Culture and Alignment
Employees are encouraged to share their “wow” stories – positive reactions or exceptional successes, whether on the customer, employee or vendor arenas. And senior management acknowledges and rewards these successes.
Control and Organization
Above all, 1-800-Flowers has rededicated itself to listening to the voice of its consumers – a job, Hendrikson said, which was not a part-time responsibility of an employee. “This has been hard-coded into the responsibilities and goals of all employees,” she noted.
The key finding has been that, to the company’s customers, two things matter most: That product be of high quality, and differentiated from other offerings on the Web, and that service is expected to be impeccable. And 1-800-Flowers has striven for this: When orders are botched, customers receive full refunds, the order is redelivered, and the purchasers get gift cards applicable toward their next purchase. And every employee is empowered to offer make-goods without the consent of a supervisor.
Hendrikson spoke during Epsilon’s Email Institute Leadership Forum.
