Teleflora delivery confirmation part 2

[RWK]

Ok, In the other thread about mandantory delivery confirmations.....There is sooo much commentary pro and con that i fear that questions and possible solutions are being lost.

SO, here is a re-statement of the problem facing Joan and others concerning delivery confirmation and pool deliveries. It is my hope that we can work together to try and find an answer for them.

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In this explanation, there are two shops. Flower Shop A and Flower Shop B.

Flower Shop A takes an order from 800TFTD/LOCAL CUSTOMER for an area that she does not cover herself, but that she can cover by using the pool. The order is going to a recipient in Flower Shop B's delivery area.

Both Flower Shop A and Flower Shop B are member of the delivery pool.

Flower Shop A makes the arrangement. Flower Shop A's driver take the arrangement to the pool and gives it to Flower Shop B's driver to deliver. In turn Flower Shop B gives an arrangement for Flower Shop A to deliver.

Now, Here is the problem.

Flower Shop A has the order info.....Flower Shop B has the envelope and card with the flowers.

How does Flower Shop A send a confirmation of delivery when it is actually Flower Shop B that knocks on the recipients door and gives the arrangement to the recipient?

 

[Luc]

To solve of that problem, have ALL of those who want delivery confirmation work on delivering for a week in a big city and then you will find this stupid.
I rely on my fellow florist they will do the delivery when it suppose to be done.

At a major holiday time, I do not or my staff have time sitting at the computer to send delivery message to other florists. Especially Mother's Day when we deliver over 400 deliveries in 3 days.

If I find out that a delivery was not done, I expect the filling florist to go out of thier way to make my customer happy. I also make sure my customer is happy.

Why do people try to make things harder as it is.

We all know that small shop will not be compliant. They have a hard time trying to get the orders out there than starting to send messages.

KISS
Luc

 

[ourfathershou25]

I have no doubt that we can do this. We are the best network that I have ever seen in the Floral Business. I just want to thank you for all you do in the Floral business. you are the Greatest!! I am so glad that I have joined with you.

 

[RWK]

To solve of that problem, have ALL of those who want delivery confirmation work on delivering for a week in a big city and then you will find this stupid.
I rely on my fellow florist they will do the delivery when it suppose to be done.

At a major holiday time, I do not or my staff have time sitting at the computer to send delivery message to other florists. Especially Mother's Day when we deliver over 400 deliveries in 3 days.

If I find out that a delivery was not done, I expect the filling florist to go out of thier way to make my customer happy. I also make sure my customer is happy.

Why do people try to make things harder as it is.

We all know that small shop will not be compliant. They have a hard time trying to get the orders out there than starting to send messages.

KISS
Luc

This is why I began this new thread - while your commentary is welcomed, it does not address the problem as given and present a viable solution. THis is what Joan and others were talking about in the other thread, 20 plus pages of commentary and very little in the way of presenting possible solutions to problems.

 

[goldfish]

All they have to do is to create Twitter accounts and follow each other. As soon as delivery is complete, a delivery guy sends out "Tweet", which all other members will see immediately.

 

[CHERYL BAKIN]

Ok, I'll bite, Godlfish.

Twitter a/c??? Come one.......

Many of us employ retired (read elderly) people to do deliveries. We are lucky if we can get them to USE a cell phone, let alone Tweet about a delivery!! Be serious!! Text messaging?? be serious!!

Also, using my example earlier, if my team is completing 100 deliveries in a day, do I want to slow them down by having them tweet every time they complete a delivery??

While you might thing it is cool & quick, it's not!

carrying this one step further, so, as Shop A, the sender of the package, I am supposed to sort thru many, many tweets to find if my package has been delivered or not??

(remember, our pool has about 40 members, and we deliver a pretty high volume of packages).

This would be time consuming on the delivering shop's part and time consuming of the sending shop's part. It would lead to a great slow down in our delivery process. Not going to happen in this way.

No way for us, at the present time, to sort out the WS orders that need a Dcon from all the other orders we deliver in a day.

Cheryl

 

[BOSS]

You guys are making this too hard.

It can be done, and fairly easily (with the right programmer), but the problem is that it will require a cross platform technology solution that is internet based with real time connectivity.

MAS and FAS already have the parts in place, this can be done where it is *almost* seamless requiring very little human interaction. It does require that florists have and use technology, a paper system will not do.

The hold up will/would be wire service technology, simply because they want to keep their florists in the stone age technology wise and refuse to cooperate with what's in the best interest of their customers with their backwards thinking of maintaining *control* by disallowing users features that will help them advance their businesses to the next level.

 

[theRKF]

I come back to the tried and true method used by Martin's (multiple delivery services, couriers, drivers, etc, covering a very large territory).

All delivery problems must be reported by the driver at the time of the incident. No report by 5:30pm = delivery done (later deadline at holidays). Send DCONs as a routine part of the day end.

Until drivers get more sophisticated technology, it really doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

Ryan

 

[lisa greene]

If it is a Bloomnet order the delivery driver calls the toll free number and punches in the code, voila it is conformed at the point of delivery. So Bloomnet orders are not a problem. Now to get the same convenience from the other systems would be great.

 

[RWK]

For Bloomnet - using the toll free number option. - How does that work if Shop A is Bloomnet and Shop B is NOT ??

Remember - Shop A took the order and made the arrangements for the order - Shop B has them on the truck delivering them.

For clarification - Shop A and Shop B are not branches of the same shop. Shop A is a seperate business from Shop B.

 

[CHERYL BAKIN]

And in a delivery pool, we generally don't know....and really don't care....as a delivering shop whether your order is a Bloomnet, Tf, FTD or your own home grown.

Our tags, and delivery slips, for the most part, have no way of identifying this.

Best thing I have come up with over night was to put a Day Glow Green sticker on the Pool ticket that needs to be Dconned. Hopefully the driver and the shop owner would see that, and then decon it back to Shop A, where the order was originally filled, who could in turn, Dcon it back to the WS sender.

I'm a simple girl......sometimes simple may have to work...at least until we get all the technologies talking to each other, like they used to do via the Mercury Network!!

Cheryl

 

[goldfish]

I concede that Twitter or text messaging may not work.

But I think the biggest problem for delivery pool florists is this... You guys probably won't be able to agree on any new rules!

Some florists would scream why they should work extra just to please teleflora. They would say they are not a WS member, so they don't care. Other florists angrily respond that there anti-dcon florists are living in a stone age and obstructing the progressive move. And on and on, until everyone gets tired and go home.

Just like the original dcon thread.

 

[RWK]

Using a colored sticker might work very well. With our pool, we use the colored 1/2 inch dots to indicate various instructions.

For instance - the delivery needs to be there by a certain time - we put a red dot and write the time on the sticker. If it is to be delivered after a certain time, then we use a green sticker with the time wrote on the sticker, if it can be left, then a blue sticker is used. A different color could certainly indicate that this order requires a delivery confirmation ASAP.

This is a useful idea. Thank you Cheryl.

( greenie coming your way as a TY )

 

[lori042499]

The answer is simply to require all orders to have a dcon at the end of the day....make it a requirement and it will be done....

I have seen this happen time and time again in shops over the last 20 years....New technology is bought by shop, workers revolt it is different, it is harder, it is more work...management caves to the complaints and doesn't require workers to comply to new rules, orders get lost, don't get entered timely, makes more work or everyone and drags out the fact that new techology is bad for business...

Shops that change and upgrade and require workers to comply, do much better than shops who give in for fear that their people will leave, quit or complain....this is going to happen sooner or later for all shops or they will have to go away...I do not belong to our Boston delivery pool, simply because I do not like other peoples ways of doing business, I do not like the way other people manage their delivery drivers and I don't want my deliveries in there until more people are on the same page....

A while back I got an order from CHR and she asked if I could send her a photo of the arrangement and confirmation of delivery....I complied because that is what her customers expect of her and I wanted to make her business run as expected while taking care of her order...Was it above and beyond what I supply to my customer, yes....I did it out of courtesy for how she does things because frankly it is a good idea and I am envious that I can not get it together enough to do this for my customers...It will be done in the future as I fine tune things....

At Mother's Day I delivery con over 300 deliveries from 2 drivers everyday, I make it part of the job, just like printing out invoices and getting stamps, this is just a rediculous as saying to people, you have to pay with a cc because it would cost me extra money to keep track of your account and print statements and mail the bill....realistically this just does not work, it is sounds silly to the consumer and frankly makes florists look cheap and petty....If it were your customers demanding it instead of TF I'll bet 90% of you would be singing a different tune, but the way I look at it is this is why TF and all those OG's have taken our customers because they listen to them or even bother to inquire from their consumers what would make them happy to shop with them....Can we say we ever do this, we can't even come up with a comprehensive list of why a bride should shop with us rather than a Basement betty, that is sad folks and it is all because we as an industry make a whole bunch of assumptions based on our thought about the industry instead of based on fact about the consumers thoughts on the industry....

All the big guys use our money to do research on what the consumers want, don't want, what they will buy and what they won't, what the will spend and what they won't, How they buy, where they buy all of this stuff and we all get mad when they implement things that make them better instead of learn and grow from it....This is what is wrong in the industry, I have been saying this alot and the WS are not the problem, we are the biggest problem getting in our own way as an industry, not wanting to change and staying stagnant to the point of extinction....I don't like change any more than anyone else, but if I want o be in business and grow, I better get used to it and see the forest for the trees in order to have the longevity needed to survive....

I am expecting this to not sit well with alot of people, so groan away if you must...

 

[bloomz]

And in a delivery pool, we generally don't know....and really don't care....as a delivering shop whether your order is a Bloomnet, Tf, FTD or your own home grown.

Our tags, and delivery slips, for the most part, have no way of identifying this.

Best thing I have come up with over night was to put a Day Glow Green sticker on the Pool ticket that needs to be Dconned. Hopefully the driver and the shop owner would see that, and then decon it back to Shop A, where the order was originally filled, who could in turn, Dcon it back to the WS sender.

I'm a simple girl......sometimes simple may have to work...at least until we get all the technologies talking to each other, like they used to do via the Mercury Network!!

Cheryl

Cheryl - respectfully submittied but that's a band aid - since they are going to do it - you really need to do the major surgery needed and provide them to all your customers - not just theirs.

Get my drift?

Don't let them beat us at this game and provide consumers service we won't/don't do for our own. AMOF - I'd get my own covered first and they are and will always be secondary to my local customers.

 

[Doug Munro]

The answer is simply to require all orders to have a dcon at the end of the day....make it a requirement and it will be done....

I have seen this happen time and time again in shops over the last 20 years....New technology is bought by shop, workers revolt it is different, it is harder, it is more work...management caves to the complaints and doesn't require workers to comply to new rules, orders get lost, don't get entered timely, makes more work or everyone and drags out the fact that new techology is bad for business...

Shops that change and upgrade and require workers to comply, do much better than shops who give in for fear that their people will leave, quit or complain....this is going to happen sooner or later for all shops or they will have to go away...I do not belong to our Boston delivery pool, simply because I do not like other peoples ways of doing business, I do not like the way other people manage their delivery drivers and I don't want my deliveries in there until more people are on the same page....

A while back I got an order from CHR and she asked if I could send her a photo of the arrangement and confirmation of delivery....I complied because that is what her customers expect of her and I wanted to make her business run as expected while taking care of her order...Was it above and beyond what I supply to my customer, yes....I did it out of courtesy for how she does things because frankly it is a good idea and I am envious that I can not get it together enough to do this for my customers...It will be done in the future as I fine tune things....

At Mother's Day I delivery con over 300 deliveries from 2 drivers everyday, I make it part of the job, just like printing out invoices and getting stamps, this is just a rediculous as saying to people, you have to pay with a cc because it would cost me extra money to keep track of your account and print statements and mail the bill....realistically this just does not work, it is sounds silly to the consumer and frankly makes florists look cheap and petty....If it were your customers demanding it instead of TF I'll bet 90% of you would be singing a different tune, but the way I look at it is this is why TF and all those OG's have taken our customers because they listen to them or even bother to inquire from their consumers what would make them happy to shop with them....Can we say we ever do this, we can't even come up with a comprehensive list of why a bride should shop with us rather than a Basement betty, that is sad folks and it is all because we as an industry make a whole bunch of assumptions based on our thought about the industry instead of based on fact about the consumers thoughts on the industry....

All the big guys use our money to do research on what the consumers want, don't want, what they will buy and what they won't, what the will spend and what they won't, How they buy, where they buy all of this stuff and we all get mad when they implement things that make them better instead of learn and grow from it....This is what is wrong in the industry, I have been saying this alot and the WS are not the problem, we are the biggest problem getting in our own way as an industry, not wanting to change and staying stagnant to the point of extinction....I don't like change any more than anyone else, but if I want o be in business and grow, I better get used to it and see the forest for the trees in order to have the longevity needed to survive....

I am expecting this to not sit well with alot of people, so groan away if you must...

Lori,

Congratulations, while most of us have been banging our head against the wall trying to prove our point (pro or con) you have cut to the chase.

Your point on why the "big guys" select the products they do is well taken. The fact is that there is no conspiracy to undermine the fulfiller. They are simply treating flowers as a retail commodity and searching for ways to increase their sales by providing products to the consumer that will excite them. The problem is that the system of fulfillment that is in place is one of thousands of suppliers, with NO consistent inventory, quality standard, or shipping procedures.

Quite frankly I am amazed in today's world this concept still functions as well as it does. The saving grace is that we deal in a perishable product that typically requires extra care making it more problematic to ship and our commodity in many cases is ordered on a just in time basis.

However, just because the current system is still in existance and functioning does not mean we shouldn't be striving to improve it for the consumers sake and the long term viability of our industry

 

[Rhonda]

Next week, we will begin beta testing Dove Network Delivery Confirmations on headquarters orders. A small number of pre-selected RTI, Eagle, Daisy, Dove POS, DovePlus and Legacy Dove shops will be asked to install and use this new functionality for several weeks. The beta installation teams have already started approaching selected shops about participating in this special beta program. Our goal is to make delivery confirmation functionality available to all our members later this summer, but we will not make delivery confirmations mandatory at that time.

nuff said

 

[lisa greene]

It does not matter what shop sends the confirmation, we have temp drivers do it all the time. On the delivery slip we have the order number for them to call in.

 

[PhillyPhlorist]

I come back to the tried and true method used by Martin's (multiple delivery services, couriers, drivers, etc, covering a very large territory).

All delivery problems must be reported by the driver at the time of the incident. No report by 5:30pm = delivery done (later deadline at holidays). Send DCONs as a routine part of the day end.

Until drivers get more sophisticated technology, it really doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

Ryan

But Ryan - the Pool issue is STILL here: how do we KNOW it was delivered without issue?
Our pool has a rule that if there is anything wrong with the order, the sending member must be notified. Sometimes, the pool driver does not get back to the shop until after another shop closes. You can't do a Dcon on an order you don't know is ACTUALLY delivered.

- h.

 

[PhillyPhlorist]

The answer is simply to require all orders to have a dcon at the end of the day....make it a requirement and it will be done....

Missing the whole point here, Lori. Orders sent TO a delivery pool cannot have ACCURATE delivery confirmations, unless there is a uniform way all XX members agree to adhere to. You can just "make it part of the end of day" routine when you don't have good data. It's anything but routine...

Tech DOES exist to get D-cons from a pool, problem is our industry is not tech-savvy. I have a work flow plan done, and the application on paper. The entire system is web-based. It would take less than 30 seconds to log in & upload your Inbound pool deliveries (deliveries you put in the pool) into the system. At a given time, you could then print out a report of all Received pool deliveries you would get at the pool, that day - even before your driver gets to the pool meeting (you could email the driver this report provided he/she is using a SmartPhone...)

The sticky parts are:
- Getting the data out of the POS (as ref. to by BOSS-MAS)
- Importing data INTO the POS delivery module, so driver routes could be entered/electronically done.
and, the stickiest...
- ALL pool members would have to sign up to the system in order to make it work.

I have much more on this, but protecting my ideas from virtual eyes.

- Herb

PS - so, the issue on THIS thread is NOT to do the D-cons, but HOW to do the D-cons, when you put in 50,60,70,80% of your deliveries into a Pool.