A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.
-W.H. Auden
Before you could call a directory to indirectly order bouquets, before you could sit at your computer and order bouquets for delivery, people came to shops and got the expertise of florists. With the shift towards florists directories, that is no longer the case. They break down the need of the customer to ask questions and make the florist unable to give answers.
If customers can't come out and ask, they shan’t receive what they want. Expecting without asking is crackers... without cheese.
Take our shop for example: average customer with the I-want-more-for-less mindset stumbles upon the get-out-of-the-dog-house-for-less directory. He places through the magical discount call center in the sky and his order for a bouquet marked on my site for 50$ is bequeathed to me for a measly 30$. He, as he only could, will believe he will get this 50$ bouquet for only 30$. He isn’t going to be happy or my design and delivery fee will have to be transformed into a donation towards the sanctity of salvaging coupledom.
As much as I want to believe that the phone florists have the best of intentions, I can't help but feel they're getting the better of us. The addition of the middleman cuts out the florists ability to manage expectations. The menu says Cabot but they’re serving Velveeta because the menu is marked by a misguided middleman and not a Monsieur Herve Mons. In the end, everybody is going to be disappointed.
Unless the customer calls directly.
If you give cause to circumvent the ability to communicate directly and manage the expectations of the customer, you can't hope to be prized by them as something local and prized elsewhere too.
