Case study: Roses Only enhances customer service through its digital offering

Brisbane-based online florist Roses Only has enhanced its customer service and supply chain by embracing a suite of digital tools.

Kelly Taggart, CEO at Roses Only discussed with Digital Nation the ways in which digital tools have bolstered their brand and their sustainability goals.

She explained how Roses Only is using customer data to reduce waste.

“We use the data that we can crunch through our databases to forecast the right product mix. Then that filters down to the right mix of flowers for those products. That's something that is important as part of our business to make sure that we're reducing the amount of waste that we produce,” she said.

“We get that down to 2 percent or less, which is amazing. When we're managing over 100 different types of flowers and foliage, that's a pretty mean feat.”

Roses Only have developed their own in-house apps to help produce bouquets and keep track of the quality of flowers.

“Then that makes sure that our customers get a better experience every single time because we can go back, follow it through and then improve it iteratively each time.”

They’ve also developed a delivery app to ensure that the courier has the right product that they need to deliver.

“All of these things have been developed because they've happened before and they're solving previous problems,” she added.

During lockdown Taggart said the company saw a huge demand for flowers so their technology partner Macquarie Telecom made sure the websites were running smoothly.

“Macquarie Telecom was able to make sure those websites are still running smoothly, and there wasn't any friction there,” she said.

During peak demands, Taggart said Macquarie Telecom also ensured their phone line and SMS service ran smoothly.

“In terms of customer care and talking to our customers on the phone, it was important that during those times of peak demand that the voice quality wasn't affected as well that our SMS still went out on time,” she said.

“Often, SMS is important because it's time-sensitive, so it can't be sent as an SMS. Then it waits a couple of hours because, by that time, it's too late. So having that backbone from Macquarie Telecom to make sure that everything continued to run smoothly was paramount.”

Taggart said they've built a strong foundation for growth to accommodate more volume on their site.

“We're looking to grow and see how we can help more customers. We've got a good offering and we've got a really great team. A lot of the foundations that we work from what I mentioned before was like a ‘what you see is what you get’ mentality.

"What you see on the website is what gets delivered and we can offer that through a number of other brands as well,” she ended.