FAQ: Your Most Valuable Support Resource – Our Employees

No! This would save us a lot of money but it would not be good for our clients. A new user being trained for the first time or an experienced user with an advanced question have at least one thing in common - they don't want to be dealing with language issues. We are happy to pay more for North American support because it services our clients better.

It's also better for the industry overall. By keeping support salary in North America we have a few more people that are likely to buy flowers from real florists right here in the US and Canada.

No. Many POS providers use shared call centers where agents are required to support any number of products and services. One minute they could be helping someone with their online banking questions and the next providing support for software.

This would definitely save us money but it's not good for our clients because the agents are not very helpful. Essentially they listen to the caller, try to find the answer on a support website and then recite it back. If they can't get an answer they escalate it to someone slightly more knowledgeable (you get to explain the situation over again) and possibly a third time - finally reaching "level three" or true support by a dedicated employee.

We skip all that. You go straight to one of our own full-time product experts - who do nothing but work with our clients and product all day every day - so you get the best possible answer in the shortest possible time.

Our 'front line' employees are the ones that deal directly with our clients... people like the salesperson that answers your questions and helps you make an informed decision and the support agents that train you and take care of your problems.

As you know the flower business is incredibly complicated. It's not something that can be explained to an outsider in a few months. And it's definitely not something that you want to have to explain when you call looking for answers.

When you are considering FloristWare and talking to a salesperson you need them to understand things like wire services. When you are looking for support you need someone who understands the intricacies of this business - not someone who got the job because they were a relative, friend or neighbor and needs it explained to them.

So, to serve you better, we employ true industry experts. In fact our front line employees have almost 100 years of combined flower industry experience.

Background knowledge (more than twenty years experience) of the industry comes from the founder, supported by ongoing shop visits, training and education through industry events and association involvement plus close working relationships with many industry experts, educators and trainers. Feedback from current clients is closely monitored and analyzed by Support (what users like/don't like, find easy/confusing, feature requests, etc.) prior to sharing it with Development. Ongoing development is handled by experts in database and user interface design.

Here the needs are a little different. You probably won't be dealing with them directly very often so inside knowledge of the flower business is less important. Instead the priority is making sure FloristWare remains a successful business so that we will be around and serving our clients for the next hundred years. We employ the people best able to ensure that rather than friends and family. We take this seriously.