Why we Rejected a Customer

The customer service story for this week will be slightly different. We have decided to be transparent and let people know of our failures together with our successes. We define a failure as having failed to meet our customers’ requirements. We have received hundreds of orders, and we are proud that we have not rejected many of them. We hope that you will not judge us too harshly for this. Here’s the story…

3 Champagne Roses

Sometime last week, a customer called us. This customer was a very courteous man who wanted to order a bouquet of 3 champagne roses. He told us that he wanted just a bunch of 3 champagne roses with very simple fillers. If you have bought from us before, you would know that we had a policy of not accepting orders below $35 (Our Lowest Priced Bouquet).

Being honest with our customer

This particular customer had received a terrific recommendation about us from his friend, and he really wanted to buy from us. He was actually willing to buy that simple bouquet for $35. It was heartening for us to have a customer who trusted us so much that he was willing to pay a premium for his bouquet. However, we had to reject his order. Much as we hated to lose this customer’s business and not be able to serve him, we could not morally make him pay $35 for something that might only cost him $15-$20 from his local florist. We kindly told him that if he visited his local florist for something like that, it would cost him much less than what we could charge. The customer was rather disappointed, but he was also grateful to us for being honest with him.

Some of you might be wondering: why do we charge so much more than other florists for the 3 Rose Bouquet?

Because of our unique E-Commerce structure, we actually buy flowers in bulk when we receive an order. That means that were you to order a bouquet of 6 Roses, we would buy 20 Roses, on top of fillers, to supply you with the 6 Roses. This means that if you were to order a less popular colour like Champagne roses, it would cost us much more to make the bouquet. This was the reason we had to reject the order for Champagne roses.

For your local florist with a physical store, they can afford to store a greater variety of roses in their fridges. However, this also means that they have higher wastage and that they have to tack on the storage costs onto your orders. That is why bouquets bought from physical store are more expensive than those you can buy from us.

Disclaimer – We are still one of the cheapest

Does this mean that we are less competitive than other online florists? No! For a bouquet of 3 roses, other online florists might also charge you more than $35. However, we feel that it is important to be honest with our customers so that they get the most suitable bouquet at the lowest prices. We aim to be THE florist that you’ll go to for all of your floral needs.

How we plan to solve this

Right now, we have no ways of solving this problem without incurring losses in terms of wastage and storage. The only way that we will be able to serve 3 Champagne roses at lower prices is if we have a greater volume of orders. If our volume allows us, we would be able to offset the cost of storage and wastage and be able to serve our customers lower and lower prices. However, if you do have an idea for us, feel free to comment!

Introducing our Freestyle Bouquet

We recognize that some of our customers do not need 6 Roses, so we came up with a new product idea. This idea came in line with our increased volume which will help us serve you at lower prices.

https://floralgaragesg.com/product/r00-freestyle-bouquet/

Here’s the product if you’d like to order!

For just S$30.00, tell us how you’re feeling, and briefly describe to us your relationship with the recipient. We’ll whip up something for you that complements your story, and we will ensure that your bouquet has a minimum of 3 juicy roses! It’s gonna be a free-style creation so sit back and be surprised!

We hope that you’re pleased with this story 🙂

If you have any feedbacks, suggestions or criticisms, do tell us in the comments section below!

Have a great long weekend!