Customer Service Lessons Learned from Lenny

Episode 266: In today's episode Lori candidly shares a heartfelt update on her father, Lenny, with Vonda and listeners. Lori takes us through the emotional journey she faced while simply trying to accomplish a task over the phone, reflecting on the conflicting roles of being both a customer and an expert in customer experience and sales. Through her personal experience, Lori emphasizes the importance of effective communication in shaping the customer's journey. Drawing from her expertise in customer service, she underscores the need for better training and a deeper understanding of customer interactions for employees. Tune in to gain valuable insights into customer service and discover the lessons learned from Lenny's experiences.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Whether it's happy, sad, mad, you know, whatever the emotion is, it's always, you're always talking to somebody that has a heightened emotion. You just don't know what emotion that is.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever and Lori Wilson.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Hey Lori, I just want to check in with how's life with Lenny going?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

You know what's funny? Our podcast last week, I had a handful of mostly clickers reach out to me and say, Hey, you didn't do a life with Lenny update. Well, I'm like, oh, that's so cute. So we moved my dad into his new place, which is about 10 to 15 minutes from my house, depending on traffic. We time it every time we go. And so far I've gone every single day because there's always something, right? Yeah. So the newest thing is as you and I are recording this right now, he is back at my house temporarily because we are going through a Houston blizzard, the blizzard of 2025. So we found about an inch of snow in my backyard. The reason I brought him back here was because in his new place his cell phone would not work. Oh. Um, and this has caused an incredible amount of drop-in. First, we couldn't get his cable working, that was a whole thing. I'm not even gonna go down that road, but that worked out. That was three trips to the cable store because they kept giving me the wrong box. Uh he has a jitterbug flip phone that is supposed to be user-friendly, seniors, which is a lie, but whatever. It wasn't working, and so they sent a new one. Great, went to activate it. The the long and the short of this whole thing, because I could talk about it for 10 hours. Here's again, I think of everything from customer service, right? Because that's how my brain works, and I'm constantly thinking through who am I speaking with? How are they doing from how is their customer service? How am I doing as a customer? Am I being friendly enough? Am I giving them grace? Because I know they have a hard job. Like, am I thinking through these things way more than probably the typical customer? Am I hurting them their feelings? Like, I truly think of these things, which is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

You do. You are so amazing that you can look at that and think of, oh, how are they doing? Right, and and do a self-check.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Right, which is dumb. But so all day Saturday, um, we had issues with the new phone. They activated it. You could make one phone call, and then it would just basically stop working. And so I would call again on my cell phone, they would re reset it, it would do the same thing over and over and over. This went off and on for five hours, and then their customer service hours were ended for the day. And I'm like, wait, what? What's happened? So I couldn't leave him there without a phone because he didn't understand. So that's why he's with me. Gotcha. The next day, Sunday, their customer service hours were short too. This is where, and I was kind all day and patient on Saturday because they were pretty nice. One time I talked to a lady, every time she spoke, a loud buzzing noise came along with her voice. Oh, and I would say, Are you on a headset? And she was like, Yes, and I was like, Okay, you have a really weird buzzing noise. Is there a way? Like, I'm willing to help walk you through fixing this because you can't be talking to custom. Like, I'm trying to help her. She didn't care, she did not care, and I'm like, God, this is horrible, customer. Like, all of these things thinking our brick and mortar locally owned flower shops could not get away with this type of customer service.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

On Sunday, I had resolved myself, I was gonna call customer service. If they couldn't fix this phone, I was gonna say, please ship me another one because clearly the phone is messed up, and reactivate his old one until this works. Call someone answers, she says, Hello, this is may I have your username and ID? That's exactly how she answered. And I go, What? Hello? Because I'm thinking, am I losing my and I turn up my speaker phone? I'm like, what? And she says it again, and I go, and I tell her my name, and I'm calling for and password because I'm on it, and I go, I'm sorry, I can't hear you very well. She doesn't say a word, and then she clicks in, she's like, How can I how can I help you? Like so monotone, so like mad at the world, and I kept saying, Can you move your microphone or your headset closer? I'm really struggling to hear you. She never ever acknowledges constant monotone throughout the whole conversation. She's going through this checklist, which I've done 25 times. I was like, I've already done that. Please. And she'd repeat it, okay, I'll do it again. We do it, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing works. Then she's like, I'm gonna need to send you a new phone. I'm like, okay, that's great. Can you react to the phone? No. I'm like, what? No, we don't do that kind of thing. I mean, just super and not explaining it anyway. It escalated. That's when I just blew up, and I out came this lorry that has been hiding for the last three weeks in this whole process, and I exploded. And so this is what so many thoughts afterwards. I thought this now I can I understand why customers can explode when you're dealing with emotional situations because you know what I'm going through with my dad. Everybody knows. Um, everything my emotions are very heightened. And the way this woman was treating me, her tone of voice, her attitude. I even mentioned once, and I'm like, Are you okay? And she just was ignoring me. And I'm like, what the hell?

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

It was so crazy. And at the end, she sh um just said, have a nice day, and hung up on me. Hung up. No explanation, nothing. I logged into his account, it had been deleted. Like I couldn't log in, username, password, nothing. Wow. And I'm like, oh my gosh. So I called back and I got somebody else with a friendly voice, and I explained to her, and she said, Let me look into this. Hold on. And she goes, Yes, I see your account. It's been flagged. I go, I would imagine it has. And she's reading through and she's like, This is so weird. And she's like, Your that phone was not activated correctly. And anyway, the phone is works now. And she explained, she said, the reason that she couldn't activate your old phone is be I mean, she explained the whole thing, which made total sense.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

You know how we're always telling shop owners or people the when you're working in customer service, educate your customer. Yeah, that's what this lady did. Like she educated me. Right. And I'm like, you're amazing. You are amazing. And I wanted to cry. I had already sent three scathing emails to this company in 48 hours. Yep. When I finished with this lady, I sent such a beautiful email.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

And I'm like, well, this is about this person. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

This lady is how it's done. Like, I'm sure everything was recorded because it says these are I'm like, this is the recording that needs to be in your training. She educated me. The outcome was not different. They still couldn't switch over.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

But she educated me as to why they can't reactivate an old phone.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

So two things that I'm listening to, Lori, that I'm like pulling out of this, besides you being the person who's trying to not only get something solved, but train the customer service agent at the same time. Right. When you're trying to do that, which I think is crazy good. Right. But one, everybody has a tipping point. Yes. Everyone's 100%. And sometimes it's low and sometimes it's high. And we don't know that when we're dealing with the customer. So we can't like screw off until a certain point and go, oh, I'm going to hit it. Right. No, you have to be on top of it all. So the other is always tell them why. When that customer service person told you why this happened, and you're saying educating, but we go back to the why. It's the why thing happens. And even us, a lot of times when we have a customer who's not happy, we don't want to make an excuse, right? We want to educate them and say, you know, I am really sorry, but if you don't mind, I'd really like to tell you where I felt the breakdown was in this. And it shouldn't have happened, but blah blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

I want to tell you the second I heard the tone of voice from the woman, the first call on Sunday. The second I heard it, I knew this is not gonna go well. I knew it. I not only could you not really the audio was low, but just her the apathy in her tone made me think, I would never want to speak with this girl again as long as I live.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

So let me ask in a case like that, would you just like say, could I have another customer service person, please?

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Well, I mean, if like this was a necessity, right? Like I I had no choice. I have to get my dad's phone fixed. But if it was a flower shop, I would hang up and call another flower shop. Right. I wouldn't work too hard. I would take my money elsewhere because I have choice.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

But I will have to say, I've had customer service situations, not totally like that, but in a case where I feel like, okay, I'm getting nowhere. I also thank you very much. I'll hang up because I know there's another person back there. Right. And so I'll hang up and call back. And they'll say, Oh, I see you were talking. I'm like, yeah, we must have got disconnected. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

And then you get to, yeah, I should play in Russian roulette sometimes, but right now I asked to speak to someone else, to a manager, and she said, There's no managers here, I can make all the decisions. That's what she said. And I'm like, I don't believe you, honestly, I don't believe you. And so she was the worst. The the girl needs to only work behind a computer and not speak to people. She was horrible. And I'm thinking, especially for a company that markets itself to help senior citizens. Oh my gosh. I can't I can't imagine how a senior citizen could have done what I had to do for my dad with they didn't have an advocate. I honestly couldn't.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

I think of that oftentimes. Seniors need advocates, that's for sure. And just your dad, I mean, your dad is very blessed to have you to be able to do that for him because he couldn't do for self, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:07

You know, and no, there's no way. And that's the thing. It that and I think that's what makes you even more emotional, you know, when you're dealing. And so we talk about our industry buying flowers, it's always an emotional buy, whether it's happy, sad, mad, you know, whatever the emotion is. It's always, you're always talking to somebody that has a heightened emotion. You just don't know what emotion that is.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Boy, that's a really good point. You know, so you've got to be intuitive there. I mean, that's where to me, we talk about that in sales prep school, right? It's your job to figure that out in those first 30 seconds to a minute of conversation with them.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

You think of floral shop owners, floral shop employees, how many different emotions they deal with over the course of a day, one day. And I've talked about this for years. It's just like you think of that. Okay, so oh, if somebody's getting married, it's exciting. Then the next call might be, oh, I'm sorry, somebody died. And then the next one's like, oh my gosh, I'm having a new baby. Oh, there's a birthday, there's an anniversary. Oh, I'm I'm mad at my husband.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Right, you know, right. Exactly. I gotta send flowers to my friend in the hospital who just lost her baby, like every all over the place. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

You know, a lot like the telephone people who have one thing that they're dealing with. Yep. Time in and time out. Yeah. So that's why the skill of somebody who works in the floral is so important. It's very, yeah, it's very important. It kind of reminds me, Lori, of when you tried to send me something very special at the holidays. Speaking of holidays, Valentine's Day is just a little more than two weeks away. Are you ready? You know, that's Flower Click specialty is working on websites and getting ready for every day, but especially at the holidays. If you'd like more information on that, schedule a call with Donna, and there's a link in the show notes to her calendar for makes it easy for you to schedule. Another thought on Valentine's Day, we need your help. So for our Valentine's episode, we would like to come up with the funniest or most unusual cards for Valentine's Day. So pull up your past orders or just search in that brain and go, oh, that was the funniest or the most unusual or the most embarrassing card that I have ever had to type into the system or write up yourself. So help us out. Just send an email to Lori, L-O-R-I, at flowerclick.com. That's f-l-w-er-c-li-q-u-e.com. We look forward to sharing all of the memorable card messages from Valentine's Days past. This kind of reminds me, Lori, of when you tried to send me something very special at the holidays. Oh, I had gotten all these flowers, and I had beautiful flowers in my house and everything else. And so you're like, what else can I do? Yeah. And you just kept saying to me, Did something come to Yeah?

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Oh, that was a whole nother, you're triggering me, Vonda. You're just triggering me. I don't need to be triggered anymore. Okay, so first of all, let's just get this out here. And Ellie backs me up on this. You are the hardest person to buy for on the planet because you never need anything. And when you need something, you buy it.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Like you're you do the same.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Well, I do, I do, but I don't want to say you're a minimalist, but you just really don't you're you have your stuff, you have your things you like, and you always have them, and you don't have a role or anything in it, anyway. So you were having a lot of company for Christmas, right? And I was like, Well, I'm gonna get you a consumable product because that's always something fun. And so I ordered you like Harry and David, like a basket of fun little snacks and things. I was like, well, that'll always be good. And one of the reasons I ordered this was because I knew it would be delivered before Christmas Eve. So I'm like, how great is that? Because that's what, like, all over the website, you know. It's and I think I placed the order December 15th, which is plenty of time. No, I think it was on the 10th. Or it might have been in the 10th. Yeah, I didn't. It wasn't like this was an afterthought. Like, I'm thinking about this months before, like, what the hell am I gonna get Vonda for Christmas? Like, what anyway? And I always get approval from Ellie. She's like, great idea. Okay, perfect. So get it all done. I'm visualizing it's showing up at your house, all your company, and I made sure it had some of your little favorite snacks in it, you know, the whole thing. And you're like, here, everybody, snacks, leave me alone, ink the snacks, you know, whatever. And I'm tracking it and I'm tracking it, and I'm like, why is it in Grove City, Ohio? And it's December 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd. I'm like, what is happening? It's still in Grove City, like sat in Grove City. Anyway, long story short, I kept thinking of this is how our flower shops must feel when their flowers are not delivered.

unknown 18:42

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Like when they order our flower click bundles, when they order, and I'm like, now I'm really conflicted because I see both sides here. I'm pissed as the customer, but yet I've been chatting with Harry and David, customer service, and I feel but she's like, ma'am, I I don't know what's going on. It is in FedEx's hand. Like, I don't know. I am so sorry. Let me ship you out a new one. And I'm like, they're leaving, it doesn't serve its purpose now. They're all the company's gone. Like, I wanted it in the moment.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

I know. I felt so bad because it was supposed to be on the 17th because it showed, and you're like, hey, did something come out? Um, no, I'm sorry. And then, you know, then I went to Iowa and came back and showed up after I got back. That was I was so I felt so bad for you. But yes, you're right. It's that feeling of whenever you're doing something that's totally out of your control. Yeah, I'm sure you felt that, but I'm sure Harry and David's as well. I mean, yeah, people who are shipping things. I think it was last year at Christmas, Cammy sent me a candle on December 15th, and I got it January 15th. And I think everybody got one except for me. And then she's probably thinking, well, she's really snob. She didn't say anything.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yeah, it is. And I will say though, in that part when Harry and David did customer service right.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Okay, good. So they had good customer service training in their department.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Right. I mean, they stayed calm. They were like, We will replace it, we will credit your account, we will give you free shipping, we like we will do all of the things, right? And they transparency, right, right. And they also threw FedEx under the bus, right? Which is fine. It wasn't their, I mean, it it went out of their warehouse. It just, I think some FedEx employee took it home. What happened there? I don't know. I get that. So a flower shop, you know, I I put myself in their shoes for a minute and I was like, I get that now. And I think they've told you, I go, this must be how floors feel when their flowers don't come in.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Well, and you also can know how a consumer of the flower shop, so my customer, yeah, if something's delayed one or two days, even if it's supposed to be delivered on Friday and it doesn't get there till Monday, and there could have been a good reason, but you can see why you, as the customer who wanted those flowers there on Friday, was so upset.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

It needed to be there on Friday.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

For the moment you needed it for the audience. Like I've seen people that want flowers delivered to their girlfriend in their office, right? And for some reason it didn't get delivered that day, and so they end up still having to deliver it home. Well, that's not nearly as cool as being delivered in the office in front of all her friends or her peers and stuff. Like that was the reason they wanted it, and that's super frustrating.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

You know, totally.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

So there's so many sides to just those little stories that you have. But it all comes down to customer service. It comes down to being transparent about whether the delivery isn't making on time and why.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

And just being honest, you know, just honest and educating your customer. And uh you said the word transparency earlier when we were talking about Harry and David. And I think I think for the most part, customers like myself, like you, we are going to lean in more when you are honest. Yeah, we might still be mad, but it does soften me a little bit because if you come back at me with truth, there's not much I can say back. But if you come back at me with not my fault, ma'am, it's just how we do things. Well, then there's a whole arsenal of verbiage that's gonna come out of me telling you, well, the way you do it is wrong. You're gonna try to educate. Yeah. You know, and it's just it again, going back to our sales prep school, we do a whole section on diffusing the situation, right? And we talk about that. And the best way to defuse a situation is just be honest and say, how okay, how can we make this right? Let's talk through. Here's a couple of ideas of how we can make this right. Do you like either of these or do you have a do you have another idea? You know, offer up some ideas, kind of put some ideas in their head first of things you can do and then see what they say.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing life with Lenny and all the lessons. Oh, anytime. I mean, really, all these lessons came from that.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Patience. I'm learning, learning more and more about customer service. And I'm telling you what, after yesterday, okay, this is what's crazy. So they were shipping him a new phone. The phone here did not work. The one that they said was just like a defunct phone. And so we had his old phone that didn't work because they wouldn't reactivate it, and then the new phone that was not working, they were shipping a new one. So now you have three you will have three phones. Yes, this is what I'm telling you. So that one's on the way. However, yesterday, around two o'clock, out of the blue, the new defunct phone that wasn't working randomly started ringing. Oh, and I'm like, wow, who what is that noise? Like we didn't know what it was, and I it was sitting in my office, and I was in the bathroom, and I came in and now it works perfectly. Then I had an email from the IT customer service people. It had been elevated. Somebody completely deactivated it and reactivated it because they had activated it wrong. Oh my now it works, but yet I do have another one being shipped to me for free. So now we'll have three phones. Now you have a backup. Get rid of the room, it doesn't work. And then why does this take two three days to fix this? When I kept telling them, hey, I have an idea. How about we take it back to its original settings and then reactivate it? No, ma'am, we don't do that. Well, clearly you do. Somebody did. Somebody knew what they were. And I don't even work in the cell phone world. I need another cup of coffee. Good idea. Let's do that. Okay. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the business and pleasure of flowers to your Google morning routine or your flash briefing on Alexa. We look forward to seeing you next week.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

So please come back and join us and discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business.