1-800-Flowers Enhances Customer Satisfaction

By Steve Bozzo

Since its launch in 1976, 1-800-Flowers.com has built itsbusiness on the philosophy that success is defined as helping customers expressthemselves perfectly by leveraging a wide variety of original arrangements withthe ultimate goal of delivering smiles to the important people in their lives.To accomplish this goal across all our channels, we realized that we needed anintegrated customer service program to assist our online shoppers.

In 2009, as our online presence continued to grow, we beganto seek areas to enhance our online customer service process. We wanted toensure that our customers received a consistent brand experience, regardless ofwhether they spoke with a customer service agent, interacted with a florist in oneof our shops or connected with us online.

In the past, our customers who had questions while shoppingon our Website would seek support through our call center or via email.However, in 2009, as our online presence continued to grow, we recognized therewas an opportunity to enhance our customer service program and connect with ourcustomers more effectively, and from a resource standpoint, moreefficiently. 

As our primary objective has always been to provide the bestpossible customer experience in every channel, we decided to implement LivePerson?slive chat program to better serve our customers? immediate needs in real time. Ourmain goal in implementing the program was to engage and connect with ourcustomers at the most helpful moment in their shopping experience?when theywould benefit the most from an interaction.

An IntelligentSolution

One of the reasons we chose this program is because we needto connect with our customers at the right time, and LP Chat has theintelligence to proactively deliver chat invitations at the best possiblemoment, based on a visitor?s onsite behavior. Some of our most successful use cases include leveraging LP Chat?sgeo-location intelligence to help customers pick the best delivery optionsbased on their area and to successfully complete their orders.

The customer assistance we provide is both immediate andpersonal?qualities that are crucial in the e-commerce industry, as it is easyfor customers to click away from a Website.

We also are impressed by the scalability and reliability ofthe platform. For example, during our peak seasons, we experience significantspikes on our Website, which can be sixfold to tenfold in both traffic andorder volume.

With peak holidays such as Valentine?s Day, Mother?s Day andChristmas, it is imperative that our chat service be able to support heavyvolumes on specific days without compromising the quality of assistance. UtilizingLP chat, as well as our additional customer service outlets, we are able tosupport the spike in volume and serve our customers with the highest qualitycustomer service.

Another major advantage in using a platform-based chatprogram is the ability to collect and analyze chat transcripts to revealimportant insights about our business. For example, we discovered that a largenumber of visitors were asking for sunflower bouquets, particularly forMother?s Day. At that time, we hadn?t merchandised sunflowers for Mother?s Day,but we realized it would be an easy win in the future.

Since implementing live chat, we have experiencedunsurpassed success in our online customer service program. According to a 2011Forrester report, chat recorded the highest customer satisfaction score amongall online customer service channels.

By leveraging LivePerson?s customer engagement technology,we are able to maintain the high quality of support and service our customers expectfrom us, and to offer a very personal and efficient way to connect and engagewith our customers online.

Steve Bozzo is the CIOof 1-800-Flowers.