Sales Training at Silver Fox Florist
Summary: The new owner of Silver Fox Florist wanted to improve the sales of the business. Since she took over, she noticed that there were few return customers and they had a low NPS. Speaking to the employees and penalizing them with cut hours did not work so she enlisted my help to come up with a more effective solution to the issue.
Audience: Employees of the flower shop (5 designers, 2 assistants, and the owner)
Responsibilities: Needs assessment; planning and creation of the explainer video, job aids, and agenda for the all-hands meeting with the staff.
Tools Used: Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe XD, and Vyond.
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Problem & Solution
Silver Fox Florist (client) is a small, female-owned business that has been in Westlake, Ohio (a western suburb of Cleveland) for over thirty years. In that time, there have been three owners of the business. The new owner took control of the business (including the building, client list, staff, inventory, and vendor relationships) about two years ago and has not seen increases in sales, and a decline in return customers. While the owner has been working on improving wedding contract sales, the day-to-day sales have declined.
The staff are not new to the business, rather they were employees of the previous owner and chose to stay when the new owner took over. The new owner noticed some "bad habits" when it came to customer service and taking phone orders but everything she has tried in way of a fix has not worked.
My task was to determine the issue (a gap in knowledge, skills, or attitude) and suggest changes that could be made. My suggestions were for a short explainer video about the importance of customer service, job aids for employees who answer the phone and take phone orders to ensure a uniform customer experience, and an all-hands meeting for the entire staff where the new solutions were rolled out and the employees engaged in role plays to try the new methods.
Process
Process Overview
The process for the design of the learning solution included the following steps:
1. Observations and Interviews with the Owner and employees regarding the issues they have/see/want to change.
2. Interviews with customers who came into the store.
3. An outline of the complete Solution
4. Visual Storyboard & Script for Explainer Video
5. Outline for the All-Hands Meeting
6. Outline for the Job Aid- Phone Calls
7. Full development of all piece of training.
Outline of Complete Solution
I. All-Hands Meeting
A. Purpose
B. Attendees
C. Key Areas of Concern
D. Expectations for Customer Service, Sales, and answering the phones.
E. Explanation of the Job aid for the Phones
F. View the Explainer Video.
G. Discussion of the explainer video
H. Role plays for working on the new skills.
I. Final recap.
II. Phone Call Job Aid
A. Combine the steps for using the order management system with the script to be used to make customer experience more uniform and effective.
B. Have a script integrated with the steps of the order management system.
C. Give a decision tree for responding to customer questions.
III. Explainer Video.
A. Script for text hitting key points of customer service.
B. Make it simple to follow and less stressful.
C. Keep it under 5 minutes to ensure employees stay engaged.
D. Make it accessible in the company portal and on the 5 computers in the shop for replaying and refreshing on the ideas.
Explainer Video: Visual Storyboard & Script
Visual Story Board was created in PowerPoint so the owner could approve of the design.
Final color choices for the design system were in keeping with the design system for Silver Fox Florist.
Explainer Video: Prototype
This prototype was created in Power Point to test the flow of the visual storyboard.
After approval to the prototype, the final explainer video was made in Adobe Character Animator.
Click on the image to be taken to the prototype.
Full Development- Vyond Video
Explainer Video
Take-Aways
Vyond vs. Power Point
Power Point is great for creating quick prototypes of video's and presentations that require sound and movement and are great to use if that is what is available, but Vyond creates a more seamless product that is more polished and can be utilized over a longer period of time without worrying about issue with the recording.
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The client was happy with the original power point video, but was more impressed with the Vyond video and her staff responded to it more favorably than the original.
Customer Response
After the all-hands meeting and the showing of the Vyond video, in addition to the role plays that were practiced during the meetings, many of the employees made the small changes needed to improve the overall customer service of the company. There was a marked increase in the next net promotor score (70%), so there was still room to grow, but the staff was on the right track to success.
