1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. Executive Discusses Tech Trends and Personalization

To create the best customer experience, brands need to know what their customers want. That’s pretty much a given. However, what often goes unstated in this truism is the fact that brands need to understand not just what customers want right now, but what they will want in the future. The key to knowing what they’ll want in the future is staying on top of trends in technology.
 
At least, that’s what Tony Chivari, SVP of Enterprise Marketing and Customer Insights at 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc., had to say when Loyalty360 recently sat down to speak with him. Before getting on to that topic, however, he gave us the skinny on what 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. is all about.
 
“We are a family of about a dozen all-star brands,” he said. “With these brands, we’ve created a Celebrations platform, providing customers with a one-stop gifting destination to help them express, connect, and celebrate with the important people in their lives. Our innovative products and service allow us to do that. At the end of the day, our mission is to Deliver Smiles.”
 
Chivari also discussed the 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. rewards program, Celebrations Passport. “It’s designed to deepen customer engagement and enhance customer lifetime value. It offers members free standard shipping and no service charge for purchases made across our family of brands for one full year. My specific role is to help find programs and initiatives to improve loyalty, leveraging customer insights to drive growth and create efficiencies.”
 
To fulfill his role, Chivari said that he has to understand what customers need. “We try to understand what our customers’ needs are and the best way to satisfy those needs. It could mean developing new marketplace concepts, like we did with Simply Chocolate, Personalization Universe, and Goodsey. We’re open to solving customer needs in a variety of ways.”
 
This strategy also includes engaging with customers through the proper channels. “With over 40 years in the business,” Chivari said, “our company has prided itself on being where the customer will go to next. For example, embracing 1-800 toll-free technology was cutting edge when we adopted it more than 30 years ago. Being able to pick up the phone, dial a 1-800 number, and get flowers delivered anywhere in the country sounds pretty simple today, but it was innovative in the 1980s. Then, we were one of the earliest adopters of the internet. In fact, we were the first merchant partner on AOL. Most recently, we’ve been leveraging conversational commerce. We’re one of the only retailers on all five messaging and voice platforms—Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Samsung’s Bixby. We watch as technology continues to evolve and we constantly ask ourselves: How does the customer want to interact with us? And: How do we get out in front of it?”
 
When asked about data collection, Chivari said, “The volume of data continues to grow, and the tools to manage it have continued to accelerate. There are many more tools available today than there were 10 years ago, five years ago, or even 18 months ago. We’ve brought in a variety of technology tools to help us with managing data. Understanding how to use data and machine learning is the key to creating personalized experiences. We’ve invested in those tools to properly accumulate the data, and unlock the analysis and the application of the data. It’s easy to talk about the analytics, but without using it to create a differentiated customer experience, it’s just analytics.”
 
He continued, “We’re continuing to test what is important to the customer. Is it important to give them a renewal gift? Is it more important to surprise them or to give them something on their birthday? We continue to test all of those levers and will evolve the loyalty program accordingly.”
 
It’s good to see that 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc., even after four decades in business, is staying on top of technology and data collection. These two elements of customer loyalty are impossible to ignore in the current environment. We look forward to seeing how the company evolves.

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