Creating Customer Evangelists...one bouquet at a time

We use Proflowers.com to send flowers to our customers, to our prospects. We send them to new customers; We use Proflowers.com to send flowers to referrals when they call us and to the customer that referred them to us.

( There's no buzz generated in an office like that of a bouquet of flowers arriving. Everyone wants to know who sent 'em and who got 'em.  We've received very positive feedback from this very simple step. )

They've even been used to send flowers to our Customer Service manager for her birthday recently. ( She's old enough to drive; Too young to retire. Thanks for asking.)

Proflowers.com has always exceeded our expectations with fresh cut flowers, straight from the grower, often in a crystal vase...etc. 

Anyway, we sent some flowers to a customer recently in Florida. The CS rep from Proflowers.com called to say the address in Florida no longer existed.  Hurricane removed that location as a viable address for habitation or receiving flowers. It was washed out to sea....literally and yes, seriously.

So there's that awkward pause. It's our responsibility to provide a valid address, on land preferably. Failure to do so absolves Proflowers.com from further responsibility to fulfill the order. Their CS rep could have said "Bummer, dude. Looks like you're out the $35" but using Professional Speak. (Professional Speak is thus: "Ma'am, we're very sorry but with out a valid delivery address we're unable to deliver the flowers for which we've purchased at your request...." And then they go back and receive a credit from the vendor.)

But she paused and then offered this stunning solution: She'll call Fedex and tell them to deliver the flowers to a homeless shelter. She'll credit our account for the charges.

Huh?!? That's what she said.  Here's what it meant for her day: She would take the extra steps to: A. find the address of a homeless shelter; B. Call Fedex and give them the address; C. Issue a credit, time-consuming in itself, to our account.

No. We're not a huge account for them.  But as our customers rave about the flowers and we rave about their service...we're going to be a bigger account with them.

Moral of the story?

* WE'RE EVANGELISTS FOR PROFLOWERS.COM. We're  evangelizing Proflowers.com!

It was such a simple solution.  And it was all about a simple thing: what to do with a bouquet of flowers.

Now here we are giving them a little love in the ether....sharing it possibly with the entire internet.

This leads us to the next point:

* FREE WOMA. What's a woma? Word-of-Mouth-Advertising. Here's an unsolicited testimonial, out to the world.

Thanks, Proflowers.com!

So, creating customer evangelists, generating a little customer buzz and/or loyalty, is so easy.  Do something out of the ordinary for your customer, offer to help them in some way.  The rest will happen naturally.