This is exactly what I mean when I state that bend-over-backwards customer service is one of our most potent weapons against the dot-cons
While I agree that customers should get a degree of customer service in direct proportion to what they are willing to pay for (no more--no less), and I would agree that most legitimate traditional florists would want to believe the above statement . . . the sad truth is that any florist who believes that statement just isn't paying attention to what's happening and probably has no clue about how to accurately make or effectively read a P&L Statement.
.Coms aren't using "bend-over-backwards customer service" to take retail florist customers away in
DROVES ! ! ! They're using very well researched and well funded internet nationwide shotgun marketing techniques. And blind and stupid florists are not only letting it happen . . . they're in fact helping them do it.
Florists have a responsibility to themselves, as business people, to market their own business effectively in their own areas. Most don't. Or they do it ineffectively by marketing to thin air. Florists have a responsibility to themselves, as business people, to recognize competition and compete effectively against it. Most don't. They not only don't compete. They, in fact, do everything they can to help competitors take over their local markets by filling for them. Most florists are bending over backwards to give their own local markets away to these internet carpetbaggers free and clear and pretty much unchallenged. And all too many of them are blindly and stupidly using that "bend-over-backwards customer service" on their competitors' orders to help those competitors take over their own local markets.
So long as we not only refuse to recognize where we're getting our butts kicked and so long as we refuse to meet the competitor where he's doing the most damage, he will continue to do his damage and he will eventually put us out of business. I've got a bridge to sell to anybody who thinks otherwise.
We should be using our resources to butt heads with the .coms where they're living in our local areas. Too many of us, however, don't think that can be done or just don't know how so we prefer to waste any advertising money that we're williing to spend on obsolete methods targeting obsolete markets that no longer exist. Meanwhile, the .coms, who've spent millions figuring out who buys what, are well on their way to training America's
REAL flower buyers on how to make them their flower and gift source. And they're doing it while florists who have pretty much no basis for their own marketing opinions and beliefs are sitting around in some self-delusional state and trying to fool themselves into thinking they can stay in business and compete because they're willing to give the farm away in the name of customer service.
That prevailing attitude, by itself, among florists is probably going to be sufficient to kill the industry. But if it isn't, those florists without a clue who think that they're doing the smart thing by continuing to fill for their biggest direct competitors who are good enough to send them wire orders so they can hang on a little longer may well finish the job.
