SA Florist goes for the 'WoW' factor

Founders Nick Wallander and Fraser Black.

Image source: Saflorist.net

He says that e-commerce companies need to offer exceptional service if they are to attract and retain customers. "South Africa doesn't have the huge potential customer volumes you might expect if you were in the US or the UK, so new customers are valuable and need to be treated accordingly."

Traditionally, SA e-commerce has been dominated by a handful of large players. They did as they liked due to lack of competition and very high barriers to entry, such as the high cost of warehousing, inventory, logistics and fulfilment.

"How many times did you order something for it to be delivered, but learn after the transaction that it was actually out of stock and would be delivered at a later date," asked Wallander. "When we entered the florist sector in 2013 we decided to provide the best customer experience in our sector and to use technology to help us achieve that."

To gauge customer experience, SA Florist launched its Customer Experience Barometer in November 2015, which allows it to track and score its customer experience dynamically. It then publishes all reviews, aggregates the scores and presents this as a dynamic score on the home page of its site. This score gives its customers confidence that SA Florist delivers orders with the relevant care and attention.

An emotionally charged purchase

"SA Florist is an online marketplace for the florist industry rather than a pure retail site and our customer's experience, having trusted us with their important purchase, is our number one priority. We believe that each flower order is an emotionally charged purchase and needs to be treated as such. It's not just a plain and simple online order," explained co-founder Fraser Black.

"How slick was our checkout? Did the customer manage to navigate to what he wanted without getting lost and within just a couple of clicks? Was he supported every step of the process? And more importantly, did the flowers get to where he wanted them and when he wanted them? These are the bits that build the customer's experience and go beyond the normal well-priced, beautifully arranged product," he added.

This is achieved via SA Florist's customer and florist ratings-and-reviews algorithm. Basically, the back-end algorithm scores each florist on every order he fulfils. It notifies SA Florist how long each florist takes to reply to each order, how long it takes for them to fulfil the order and how long it takes until the order is delivered to the customer.

"It goes without saying that our best performing florists naturally receive the lion's share of our orders as they are helping us deliver the best online customer experience in our sector," said Black.

Review and rate

The reviews and ratings happen at both the florist as well as the customer end. Once the order has been delivered, the customer is sent an email asking him to review and rate his experience. SA Florist then publishes all reviews on the site and its algorithm then scores these reviews dynamically and publishes a score out of five.

"We list every rating, good or bad, and post them at the top of our home page for everyone to see. Any rating lower than 3.5 is investigated by our team and resolved immediately. Our overall customer experience rating is something that we are extremely proud of. It's reassuring, not only for SA Florist, but also for our customers, in that we are all of the things that we claim to be," added Wallander.

SA Florist strives to deliver a 'WoW' customer experience, an aggregated score of 4.6 out of five or higher. Based on 1446 live customer reviews, its current Customer Experience Barometer score is 4.5 out of five, which puts it in the Excellent rating range.

"We are, therefore, a mere 0.1 score away from delivering on our 'WoW' customer experience. Since launching, we have attracted only two genuine complaints on HelloPeter.com website, whereas our major competitor has 73% of its reviews being considered negative," he added.

Wallander said that a world-class customer experience is at the core of everything they do at SA Florist."From our adverts and mailers, the look and feel of our website and the efficiency of our checkout, the quality of our products and pictures, our prices, our customer service, our passionate partner florists and our 100% satisfaction guarantee."