online, type it into a Google search and you have a million possibilities. But therein lies the problem. How do you know where to go?
Enter 965flowers.com. Founded in 2011 by Abdullah F. AlKhuzam and Sulaiman Y. Al Tarrah, it is a website that will make navigating the online world of florists and bakeries a whole lot easier. Traditionally, local florists and bakers would take care of the orders themselves but in recent years a shift has been seen towards online versions of these traditional services, especially for flowers. 965flowers.com noticed a mismatch between supply and demand and so created a platform that would bridge the gap between these shops and their intended customers.
This creates a large new market for these shops and allows them to reach a much greater customer base. For the customer, it enables them to shop selectively whether it’s by price, size and occasion. In addition, orders can be placed anywhere, anytime as long as you have an internet connection.
You know longer need to trawl through thousands of Google search results to finds what you’re looking for. 965flowers.com does all the research, so all you have to do is drop by their site and find they’ve handpicked the very best florists and bakers Kuwait has to offer. It is among the first websites to offer such a service that benefits both the shop and the customer. 965flowers.com brings them together making life a little easier. The shops featured on the website speak for themselves.
In a country like Kuwait where we like to celebrate special occasions with cakes, desserts and pastries, the bakery industry is booming. The shops featured on 965flowers.com are free to offer whatever they like on the website but of course are encouraged to include their bestsellers. The pricing is also at the shops’ own discretion and the guys at 965flowers.com don’t interfere with it. They try to be as invisible as possible. They merely provide the platform that brings together shop and customer.
Customers enjoy a wider spectrum to choose form, highly dependent on price and quality whilst the shops will enjoy higher deal flow, positively increasing their sales and achieving a higher return on investment. Furthermore, each shop can track real-time results using online analytics to determine how their products are performing and in addition, to retain customers off- business hours and on public holidays.
In the future 965flowers will continue adding to its list of florists and bakeries providing more choice for the customer. They are also planning to launch a gifts section of the website towards the end of 2012, making buying that last minute birthday present that much easier.
Do you have questions for a psychologist? Are you afraid or embarrassed to see one? Well, we may have the...
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A group exhibition in collaboration with Gypsum Gallery, Cairo, Egypt, inspired by the a quote from “Just Kids”, a memoir...
Aim: To give artists the skills and knowledge required to prepare for the fine arts world, taking their art career to a more professional level.
Put together a proper packet, including how to write an effective and concise artist statement, biography, and curriculum vitae (CV).
Learn how to price your work, basic tools of self-promotion, and strategies to approaching galleries and curators.
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Got business problems or challenges at work? With his Two Cents page, Loaay Ahmed shares his expertise in strategic management consulting to help managers, employees, and entrepreneurs thrive.
Is it acceptable for our manager to raise her voice all the time when she’s talking about issues that are important to her at work?
Some people are passionate about what they believe in or about the vision that they would like to reach. Sometimes, this passion can be overwhelming to others on the receiving end. The problem with raising one’s voice during meetings, for example, is that people stop listening to the content of the manager’s speech because they are too annoyed by the loudness of the voice and intensity of the tone. What managers need to keep in mind is that when employees feel disturbed and uncomfortable by raised voices, regardless of the truthfulness of their message, they won’t successfully bring their point across. When an extremely loud horn or noise is blowing next to people, they cover their ears and that’s human nature.
There are better ways for managers to get the attention of their employees. For example, if your sales team needs a push to achieve the current quarter’s targets, consider using drama and tragedy to illustrate the impact on the employees themselves if they do not close the gap. Address with each employee separately what he or she might have to let go of in their own personal lives when they lose their bonuses to help them to visualize the size of the problem and be motivated to work harder. However, if the team was productivity challenged, give employees the freedom to work on one project with the same poor production level as long as they deliver on time and with the right standards. They might surprise you or learn their lesson. Either way, yelling doesn’t work…and that’s just my two cents.
It’s easy to talk about being customer focused on our website and in meetings and press releases, but can we actually translate this philosophy into practical actions?
John Tschohl once wrote, “The goal of any service strategy should be to systematize — to institutionalize — a customer service program that’s well established, for the long term, in the culture of the company.” If you are a retailer, for example, review your return and exchange policy. See if it is with or against your customers’ benefits and shopping experience. Let’s say you were a shipping company. When you examine your internal processes you can spot areas that may delay customers’ orders from being sent or received on time. For a telecom company, for example, having a clear emergency plan if a network tower got damaged means that customers in that zone won’t have to suffer poor coverage for a long time; and that shows your ability to think ahead of customers’ welfare.
Being customer focused is not a myth. It’s a tangible series of actions and decisions set to reach a balance between customers’ needs and wants and that of the shareholders’. Notice that I didn’t describe it as a balance between customers’ retention and profitability; that’s because taking care of customers and generating profits are not two areas opposite to each other, but rather deeply connected to each other. Winning half the battle of implementing a successful customer experience strategy depends mainly on the shareholders’ understanding of where profit comes from. Yet, with your best intentions to mold the business around customers, you could still miss the target, if your new workflow is based on what you think is best for customers and not what they know is best for them…and that’s just my two cents.
Is there a trick to help us see our brand position in the market without conducting a costly full-fledged research program?
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, but who’s the beholder? If it’s the brand management team or the owners of the business, then the assessment is not as objective as it could be when customers are the ones who are observing the brand. Customers usually are the best people to tell you who you are. You might think you are the best, smartest, coolest brand in your industry, but your customers might see you as nothing more than a commodity. The one-sided perception of the management team of their own brand is like how most mothers can’t see the dark doings of their own children. So, from time to time, you need the input from other partners – that’s employees, customers, suppliers, the media, and so on.
Having said that, a quick exercise you can do with your team is to ask yourselves and random members from your partners circle this simple questions: If our brand was a car (assuming you’re not in the automotive business), what kind would it be and why? Or if our brand was a hotel (again, that’s if you’re not one already), which one would it be and in what city or town, and why? By asking stakeholders to describe your brand using this form of analogy you can get a more genuine description and a more vivid visual of how others truly feel about your brand. In some cases, this exercise will be just the right prescription to give you that wakeup call. Warning, you might not always like the answer, but you should always be ready to do something about it…and that’s just my two cents.
For Loaay Ahmed’s advice on business or work matters, send a short email to [email protected] Regrettably, only the questions chosen for publishing will be answered.
Loaay Ahmed is a management consultant and strategic expert. To learn more about Loaay and his consulting service, strategic business therapy, visit www.knightscapital.com.
Giving up a career in the corporate world to pursue an innate passion for drifting full time, Mubarak Al-Rumaidhi took...