You've Had a Website for HOW long?

I'm feeling very "experienced" today.

I just realized that we're coming up to 15 years with our website at www.simonsaysroses.com

In terms of the internet, we're ancient.

But we were far from "cutting edge". The flower industry in Canada is SO competitive that we were the fifth flowershop with a website in Victoria. We weren't leaders...we were followers. But instead of the standard 2 or 3 page site, we went big with a page for every city and town in Canada, and catalogues for over 150 countries as well. Our site became huge...very quickly.

After all, if people wanted flowers anywhere in the world, why not order them from us?


Have you ever heard of AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, or HotBot? These were the popular search engines before Google became a noun AND a verb. We had a lot of people in the early days that found us in directories that weren't Google, Yahoo or MSN/Bing.

Yup, we've been around that long.

So where were our customers coming from? Is there a way to analyze this information? Considering Google Analytics started in November, 2005, our analytics program started in October of 1998.

That's 7 years BEFORE Google!

These analytics programs are great. I found out that:

1. Over 1.2 million searches have been done on Google that resulted in people hitting the Simon Says Roses website.
2. The most popular keyword is "flower", with over 274,000 searches.
3. Our rose page at www.simonsaysroses.com/telerose.htm is our most popular page, with 5.5% of people viewing that page.
4. Although the vast majority of people finding us have a .com, .net, or .ca domain, we have had one page view from the .va domain...which is for Vatican City!
5. Of our top 6 customers, three live in Toronto, one in Vancouver, one in Calgary, and the other is from Yellowknife.

All six have been ordering from us for years and although we've never met personally, we do have great phone conversations and have built long term relationships.

And that's the fun part of having an online flower business...even after 15 years!

Good Deeds Sometimes DO Get Punished

So we had an order come in online, at 2:20 in the afternoon.

It was for same day flower delivery to the Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver.

I knew it was tight for time. I knew I had to rush to process the order in our point of sale, and send it to our sister shop in Vancouver. I knew that a miracle had to happen!

IT DIDN'T.

Normally I don't accept orders past 1:00 for same day delivery, because orders take time to process, the arrangement has to be constructed, and hopefully a driver is still around at the end of the day for delivery. I had my fingers crossed, but a busy shop in a big city like Vancouver might make it work.


I took a chance...and it backfired big time.

In Special Instructions, I informed the delivery service to deliver the following morning if it was too late for today. The sender of the floral arrangement didn't see these instructions when I emailed her Order Confirmation Invoice.

So.....the order didn't get delivered until the following morning, BUT...


...when we mark an order delivered, it triggers a Delivery Confirmation email to the sender.

And the Confirmation had the previous day's date!

So the sender thinks it was delivered on the day she requested, but it wasn't.

It was just an oversight in not changing the date, but now the trouble begins.

We were liars...incompetent...rude...you name it. "You said it was delivered on Monday and it wasn't delivered until Tuesday morning. Your business is terrible and I'll never use you again!"  And of course this all gets posted to Social Media as a negative review about how awful our business is.

All because we over-promised and under-delivered.

We tried to be accommodating, and it didn't work.

So we get a negative review, for the world to see.

Lesson learned!

Thank you for calling Simon Says Roses...Frank Speaking...

So it's Friday afternoon, and the phone rings.

I answer the phone in my usual way.

"Thank you for calling Simon Says Roses...Frank speaking."

The reply?

F**k off !!!

I didn't know how to respond.


There must have been 10 seconds of silence.

I finally blurted out "hello", not sure of what the caller might say next.

Was this a harassment call? An obscene caller? Someone upset about their flower order?

Nope.

He thought he was getting a pre-recorded voice message.

 WOW.

Now I've been told I have a "radio voice", but to think my greeting was a pre-recorded voice message?

And then to be told my two favourite words of all time?

I warned the sender I was posting this on my blog...but I'll not provide his name...to protect the "innocent".

Heck of a way to start my weekend, I'll have to admit...

You Don't Bring Me #Flowers Anymore :l

Florists sell flowers. Duh.

Loose wrapped flowers to arrange in her own vase basket arrangements, wreaths, funeral sprays,  & floral arrangements are what florists are known for.

BUT...times they are a-changin'!

Did you know we now do fruit baskets, gourmet food baskets...even meat & cheese or all chocolate baskets?

Our customers tastes have dictated that we change our product offerings.

We've almost become your "gift concierge", as given enough advance time (and the money to do the shopping), we can construct almost any basket you can think of.

Give us a call for a custom order.

You may be surprised at what we can do for you!

#Canada Florist Detectives?

We expect a lot from our customers when it comes to ordering flowers online.

Just think of all the information you need to send an online gift in Canada:

• recipient's name
• address
• name of the company, if delivery to a business
• phone number
• postal code
• greeting card message
• your name
• address
• phone number
• postal code
• email address
• credit card information
• delivery date
• Product Order Code

 Many times, some of this information is simply not available.

Our customers at Simon Says often phone for help.

As "Florist Detectives", there are a number of tools that we use to find missing information.

Hardly anybody uses the phone book anymore, but at http://whitepages.ca/ we can search based on a little bit of information, and find out a lot! This site allows us to search the name of the recipient, the name of a business, the phone number, or the address, and all the information comes up that we need (as long as the person has a landline).

At https://maps.google.com/ we can type in the address, to see if the location even exists.

With our point of sale system, there are data bases included which allows us to type in the name of a hospital, funeral home, or nursing home, and the address and phone number automatically pops up.

Sometimes we have requests to deliver in rural areas. That's where a postal code comes in handy. We Google the postal code, up comes a map, we expand the map view to see the surrounding area, and figure out where to look for a florist in a surrounding community. Then with the FTD or Teleflora order transmission systems, we can quickly find an affiliate shop across Canada or the U.S. as part of their database of flowershops.

And yes, there are remote areas where NO florist is willing to deliver, or where courier charges make it too expensive.

So if you're stuck...give us a call (shameless plug) at 1-800-705-7673. Please don't let missing information cause you to miss an important occasion. Part of our service as Canadian florists is to help our customers...in any way we can!

Trying to Make Lemonade out of Flowers

We all try to be perfect.We try to never screw up. But sometimes *hit happens.

We had flowers going to a customer that worked in the Prince Rupert Hospital. The sender was prepared, as he ordered over a week in advance.

And the designer blew it.

Instead of reading the delivery date, she assumed the order was for same day flower delivery. She sent out the flower order with the delivery service that very day. Then we found out that the recipient wasn't going to be at work for the next week!

She lived on an island outside of Rupert, and now had to come in to retrieve her gift.

The sender was irate, to say the least.

So how do you fix a colossal screw up?

What we did at Simon Says Roses is to send out a replacement flower arrangement on the proper delivery date to the hospital, AND you add a box of chocolates as an apology. Of course at our cost.

...and hope like he** that the sender accepts your apology, and is willing to do business with you again.

Lesson learned...we all screw up sometime, but hopefully it's how we handle our mistakes that keeps us in business!