Interview with Audrey Kristoff, Product Specialist at Flower Clique

Episode 041: Vonda and Lori chat with Audrey Kristoff, a co-worker at Flower Clique and the product specialist. Audrey talks a bit about what she does for the company, thoughts on customer service and and shares in really cool insight on her perception of flower shop owners.

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Transcript

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She has

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11 appreciation for flowers like I do because a flare , if I'm to use a word, I have been in the industry longer and it's no one has ever reached out to me. Welcome back everyone to our business and pleasure of flowers podcast. We're so excited to be here with our coworker and employee of the month. Audrey Krista did with a start an employee of the month, Laurie . Yes , we started it like 10 minutes ago. We decided our first employee of the month is going to be Audrey. Congratulations, Audrey. Thank you. Lucky me on the very first one. Yes. So we can make up the rules as we go as to what employee of the month gets. Tell me what the benefits are of the employee of the month. Get to your podcast. There you go. Right out of the gate, which has been your lifelong dream. It's my first one ever. So Audrey is our product manager for flower click. And we're going to get into it a little bit later, what that exactly means. But Laurie , I think you were going to do a little bit of an intro and maybe a story about how, you know, Audrey, because you guys have been friends for a long time, right? Yes we have. And there's a lot that I could tell, but there's seems to be something in every one of them like, ah , maybe that's not appropriate. Maybe that was , Oh , I can't tell that one. So I have known you for how many years? Well, our oldest kids were in seventh grade, so they would have been 12 and they are now 26. So we met at church Vonda in youth group staff, our kids, same town, honest to God. I don't remember the first day I met you. I feel like I've always known you. Right? We got put in as partners in youth group together for our church, for girls, girls groups. And so one of my favorite stories, as I know it as yours, when I think of Audrey, the moment that defines our life is Audrey is nodding right now. Cause she knows Audrey is nodding her head. She knows this. This is pretty amazing to watch the two of you probably referring to a photograph that we have. Yes , yes . So that photograph depicts our life. Really just the looks on her face, the feelings that we have and have had, and the life we were living at the time. And so the photograph was taken on day three of a high school youth group retreat. So setting the stage. So it was day three out at Kelly's Island, right? We have to take a ferry to get over there. Audrey and I had spent two sleepless nights, probably in the same bunk bed because it's wall to wall teenagers. And this was our last day. And you know what? We love these kids. We loved their heart, but we , we were tired. We were dirty. We were cold. We were crabby. Crabby is a really good word, especially Audrey Audrey's crabbing. This just makes me giggle. And so it's , it's a great balance. So anyway, there was a picture of one of the high school girls. She came across and took a picture. We didn't know she was taking a picture, but we were walking from our little cabin to the chapel. And it just, the look, I think we went with high hopes and we had this look of defeat , no expression on our face to , and one of our high school girls took it and then chose to post it on social media. So anyway, I have it in my photo album as my worst photo ever went . Wow. Now that when you know a little bit of the backstory and your friendship, Audrey, tell us a little bit about yourself. I am a Clevelander. I've lived here all my life, Jim and I moved away for a little bit, but I was born and raised in Cleveland. When Lori lived in Ohio, we were friends. I married my high school, sweetheart. Jim , we have three kids. Two are in college, our oldest, she's an adult living on her own. We enjoy traveling and we have a Lake house. I love that's my happy place. Spending time there , their Lake house with family and friends and something new this year, we're empty nesters. We dropped off our youngest city to pursue musical theater. She's very excited. So Jim and I are learning to be by ourselves and especially during coven . Yeah. That's where we are right now. And it gets really challenging because you're not only empty nesters, but you're empty nesters. Probably both working from home. Yes. All three of our kids were home during COVID Amanda. Our oldest came home and worked from here for a month and then we had our middle ones going to school and Jim and I were working from home. So at one point all five of us were in a little corner of the house. Wow. Testing our bandwidth to make sure your bandwidth and your patients. We would all just meet in the kitchen when we were hungry and for happy hour. Now it's a good time to be at happy hour for sure. Yeah . Tell me a little bit about your background. Was it in customer service? No, actually I went to college for education. I was a teacher for a few years before I stayed home with my kids. And then as my kids went to school, I had an administrative job at church. I had some leadership roles in some of the parent organizations and our school district. So I think, you know, I've this developed some really good organizational skills and administrative skills and people skills. I had been working in my church when Lori and I were friends and she was the one who recruited me to come work in the floral industry and believe it or not, that was seven and a half years ago. I've been working with flower shops in one capacity or another for about seven and a half years. So I have to ask you, I've been in the industry pretty much all my life. I mean, I don't know anything else. Right. As an outsider, how do you view flower shop owners? Well, it was really interesting cause I didn't know how hard it was to run a small business since , especially in the floral industry with options changing or sourcing flowers at the grocery store or whatever. I didn't realize how difficult it was. And what I've learned about flower chef owners is they are my kind of people. They work tirelessly with tenacity and passion. And the real reason they're there is because they want to touch people with their art and with flowers. And so I have really come to love going into flower shops and talking to the owners and just seeing what that business is all about. Almost all of our members. It's just the mom and pop store that this was their dream or the inherited it from their family. It's their family's business. So that's what I really love about it. It's interesting. You just actually gave me goosebumps because I'm like, wow. You know how awesome that you described flower shop owners like that because it is so true. It's the nail on the head. You really did that because that's all, that's what it's about is they're there to make other people happy . I will throw something in here about Audrey, that she is a natural with flowers. Since she's been working with us, she has had a couple of our friends reach out to her when it comes time to their kid's wedding, she has a love and appreciation for flowers like I do, but she has a flare . If I'm to use a word, I have been in the industry longer and it , no one has ever reached out to me. I'll tell you, my grandmother loved flowers. She had tons of hydrangeas and peonies and roses in her yard. And so she always was bringing flowers in and my grandma showed me how I put her little base together and now watching Vonda's little design tutorials and the flower prep school, I watched some of those videos. So all those little tips and traits . Now mind you, I am not a floral designer, but you could be for sure. I think it's a God given talent. I've seen the pictures and we've talked about some weddings that you've done in that big arches things that you've put together. And you do. You just have a natural God given talent, and you've watched tutorial to make yourself that much better. Laurie , I'm really sorry. Nobody has asked you and know how many I'm available. I would probably say, you know what? You recommend Audrey, if you need help or even better call a flower shop, they know what they're doing. Alright , love hearing about where you started and your love for the industry. But for those who don't know, what do you do for flower clicks ? As the product manager, I take care of ordering her flower bundles. That's the program that we have, the simplified specials is kind of an offshoot of that. We have flower bouquets that we offer to our shops that are weekly specials and also take care of some of the social media posting. And I organize the celebration of life books, which we're going to talk about today. Then also I help with wedding look , book on the websites . That's one way as for merchandising or member websites that you can feature some of your custom wedding work. So go back to the simplified specials because you're just kind of passed over that. And then you went into social media. What people don't understand is the organization that takes because the simplified specials are on the website in a rotating pattern so that everybody has a different week that they're getting those specials and you had to figure out the technology to get it organized. So each one of the team members knew which day, or which week the flowers arrived and the post would go social media. So it was yeah, right organization of that. You're just like skipping over it . And it's like, when you say admin and you learned organization, this is what you learned to do. Right . You have to really take that and go, okay, now I know how to make this one. Yeah , that was brilliant. Yeah. So we have eight weeks rotating weeks and not every member has the same special and the same week. So as they get that weekly special, we're posting on their social media and Google my business. And then we're also highlighting it on their website with banners and specials. That's a new thing that we are offering our members and it's been a great success. I think our members are happy to have something new coming in each week and they don't have to think about it. All they have to do is accept the flowers and then sell it on the phone and make the arrangements. Yeah. But there was the setup of all of that though . Yeah . Wow. So much that up was a lot to me. It's kind of comical, but I'm sure Audrey doesn't think it's comical. Whenever we have that inspiration to do something like that, like weekly specials or even the bundles where like, we kind of get it in a little bit of how we're going to tell people about it, but then we're like, God, and then just give it to Audrey and with no instruction manual. It's amazing. That is not a talent that many of us have. That is not your strong point is not my strong point. No, that's why we're a great team. My strong point is not the ideas. Right ? Tell me what to do and show me what to do and I'll make it happen. Yes, that's right. That's why it takes a team. That's exactly right. Right. I will say when you look at the whole thing as a team, again, going back to when Audrey and I met, we were at, at like, it was a convention or something for adults only to learn about ourselves and something that I had a one on one with the instructor and he said, he was like, you are the person that says, Hey, we got to build the rocket ship. We totally need this rocket ship. And here's how I'm going to tell people about it . I'm going to get the crowd. I'm going to do all of this stuff. He goes, but you can't technically build the rocket ship. He goes , you need somebody else to come in and you say, okay, you build it. And that's Audrey to me, he's a lot like that to build this. Ellie's like, I mean, everybody's like that. Not so much me. I know we need to build something and I'm all in, but I don't know how to do it. We all have our strong points. And that's what makes it a well rounded team, for sure. So it's very fun to , for us to see each person's giftedness or talent or wheelhouse, whatever you want to call it because we all bring something else to the table. So let's dive in a little bit to that celebration of life book that you mentioned that you work on, how does that work? Well, you guys have done all the sympathy designs and Ellie does the photo shoot puts the book together. So we've made this beautiful, really beautiful look that members can order to take to the funeral homes. And they form a partnership work with a funeral home, sit down with the family, with the book and they can order straight from the book. It simplifies it for the grieving families . They don't really have to think about what to order. They just look at the pictures and decide what they like. So you're taking the order from the flower click members, and then they are having that partnership with the funeral director . So the funeral home and doing the work exclusively or sometimes not, but doing the work for the funeral home, correct? Yes. The shops have loved it because it is such a quality book. I think that's the biggest thing is that it's such a great quality piece of work. And like Lori and I talked about, you know, if somebody listening to this and they want to do that themselves, go for it, you know, have a photo shoot, do arrangements, arrange them in a book, but be sure and have it top quality, right? We've all seen them that they've taken a spiral notebook and they've taken Polaroid pictures , so to speak and put them in a book. Families really want to be able to look and feel and have a really nice book that they're looking at. And not just like flipping through pages of something that somebody just took a snapshot of. I agree, really elegant coffee table, book quality. We also do like a little jump drive, right? If a shop wants to do the online version, correct. It's really interesting because many of the funeral homes, now they bring the family into a conference room and they have a screen or a TV or a screen that they show caskets and presentation on. And so yes, we can offer them a digital copy so that they can flip through on a large screen with the family, depending on how the funeral home does their consultation. The other thing about this book, which we haven't really mentioned at all is the funeral industry has changed quite a bit over the last couple of years. They're not offering funerals as much as Memorial services. So we have a large section of Memorial tributes for either cremation or just a celebration of life ceremony. Yeah. There's a lot of statistics on the sympathy work. The number of cremation has passed 50% at this point. And so I think our book kind of reflects that as well. It's like, you know, here's the traditional, here's a celebration of life. Interesting enough. There's not that reference to funeral as much as it is overall. It's a celebration of life. So that's kind of the trend. Right? Well, the other thing that we do is encourage our members to go in and develop a relationship with these funeral homes. And that book really gives an Inn and how to do that. Giving a book of this quality to your funeral director and showing them, training them a little bit, how easy it is to use it and how comforting and simple it is for the family to choose. I think it enhances their presentation with their clients as, as benefits the Flores, right ? Yeah, for sure. It accelerates their quality as well. There are quality service and they want to offer quality service to their shops too. It also gives you a conversation starter, right? If you're going in , um , if you're trying to develop that relationship with a funeral home, maybe you haven't done a lot of business with them, but once you, Hey, I brought you a present. I brought you a gift. I had this book made, you know, the other thing with the digital version, which really has only come into play the last six months, right. With COVID is it so many of the funeral directors are meeting with families outside of the funeral home and they're able to upload that on their iPads and bring that with them. They could bring the book, but sometimes they don't want to carry all the things. So that's what I have heard is that they really like to be able to have the digital so that they have it on their iPad. So it's easy for them to take with Audrey. Another responsibility you mentioned is coordinating the flower bundle orders. How does that work? What , what is that about? Well, interestingly enough, Vonda, I think as you developed flower click , this was one of your visions to have these flower bouquets that simplified the design process merchandising and ordering in the flower shop. So I know that this was one of your original visions and we just accelerated that process. This mother's day. So due to COVID, there were so many distribution centers and wholesalers that were closed March and April. And then as things were starting to open up in may, we knew mother's day was coming for a flower shops and they were not able to source flowers. So I think you just totally got into the game and we made this happen, you know, accelerated the process so that our members would have flowers for mother's day okays that are designed by Yvonda sent directly from the farm. And these bouquets coordinate with arrangements that are on the website butter . Yes, that's the whole idea is that what are in the flower bundles that are coming to your store are on your website. We always say, so what you have have what sell , but what's interesting is that you have taken on this project, which has not been easy. I will say it's been a challenge from the beginning because we weren't in the business of selling flowers. That's not our deal. You know, we don't sell flowers. We want to provide the flowers so that the shops have what they need to be able to fulfill the orders. So you coordinating all of these orders, different bundles and going to the shops, having to figure it out with farms and with FedEx. Again, it's another process that you have really been working on. And I think we're at the point where it's better. I'm not going to say I was going to say perfected, right . But we always strive to do better. We definitely have worked out the kinks. It has been a huge learning curve for me. I knew nothing about ordering flowers and where they were shipped from. And I've learned about international shipping from Ecuador and Colombia. And it's been amazing. And our partnership with bill Dorn company, they're helping us source these flowers and scheduling the ordering and the delivery and making sure we weren't having any shipping issues. So yeah, it's been a great learning experience for me, but also our members have been so excited to use these bundles. It's been so simple for them. So we've had some really great success. And now we have a bunch of members with standing orders because it's just simplified their process in their shop with ordering and designing. It makes a lot of sense. It really does really doesn't a lot of them have embraced that, which really does make a difference in their everyday operations. You know, it's all about productivity for sure. Then the last part that you really didn't mention is customer service. And you probably wouldn't say you're into customer service. But I think about when you're talking to people about the celebration of life book and answered sometimes endless number of questions before you get that ordered , as well as talking to them about the flower orders, it's the way you treat customers. And I think that's the culture of flower cliques customer service to me is being able to not just take the good calls, but being okay with taking the not so good calls, right. It would be in realistic, not good calls. I'm not talking about people calling and saying, I hate you, Audrey. I hate flower . Just I'm talking mostly before mother's day when we were just burning this yet , we might get an email. We all get it, but Adri will respond and she might. Right. That's all right . I'll call them. The thing that I see in Audrey is the position she kinda morphed into. She doesn't have to do that. I mean, I'm the quote director of customer service. So technically I should be the one going into the fire or Cammie . If it's a wet, Adris like, I'll call them. And I think that's huge. Well, let me tell you, I feel like two things. First of all, our members, our friends, they want us to succeed. We want them to succeed. And so I'm never afraid to call a member that subset, I dread it a little bit because I, first of all, you know, I hate making mistakes. So if it's my mistake, I , I want to own up to it. But also I know that when there's customer service issues, we need to know about that because we want to improve. Right? I do appreciate the feedback and the input that our members give us, because I know they want us to do better and we want to do better. We want to do right by them. So that's my viewpoint on customers . I think so many of the things are out of our control. I mean, those calls that you're making, it's like, Oh, they didn't make it on the plane from Columbia to Miami and you know, delays and things like that. But you handled those with such grace. Just been great. Yeah . Thank you. So Adri Kristoff , my dear sweet friend is giving you life right now. What are you like ? Well, today was my first paddle match today . For those of you who don't know what paddle is, I live in Cleveland. There is not a lot to do in the winter, but there is platform tennis, which we play outside in the snow. And it's just great to get out. It's not snowing today, but it was my first one. And this is the one thing I really love doing. So, yes, I'm very energized this morning to be out playing paddle. That's great. That's great. I know that you even struggled with whether to sign up this year because we're all so busy all the time, but I encouraged you to take that little time Tuesdays there . And then you actually told Vonda and she's like, please do this for your own mental health. I love that. We support one another when you need that kind of outlet, because I think it's healthy. That's a great thing. What about you V what's given you life right now? Well , you can't see it. Our listeners can't see this, but this is a little cube that my friend Julie sent to me, it just says different sayings. Let your faith be bigger than your fear. Faith can move mountains too blessed to be stressed that, Oh, that's good. It's just a great thing. So sometimes you just like look over and go. Yep . That's what I needed. Yup. Yup. That's very good. How about you, Lori ? So you know what? There's a lot of things, but one thing I'm going to focus on is, and this sounds so minor, but you know, I do, I live in Houston, which it's always 120 degrees. The last three days we've been able to have our window open. Not all of them, but like my office window it's been cool enough. I don't know. You guys had something about working with the window open and getting a little bit of a breeze. I just that's one of the things I do miss about Ohio is we, you know, I always had my windows open and here we don't really, I mean, I don't even have screens on all my windows here. Some of the few that we do, we've opened up and it really is. It's the fresh, clean air that just is giving me life. That's it. That's great. That's a beautiful thing. All right , Audrey, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure to be here with you and congratulations on being that employee of the month. We have certainly enjoyed our time together today, and we look forward to being with you guys again, if you have any questions, concerns, comments, anything we would love to hear from you. You can always email Laurie at flower, click.com. Also, if you enjoy our little podcast, go ahead and click that subscribe button. That's very helpful for us and you can even leave a review and we hope you join us next week. Yes. 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.

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