An IPSOS survey found that 81 percent of consumers are more empathetic towards small business owners raising prices due to inflation or shortages if they feel the business is providing excellent customer service.
There may be little retailers can do to bring down inflationary prices while maintaining a healthy profit margin, but a new survey found that small businesses — such as retail florists — can offset customer concern about higher prices with excellent customer service.
The survey was conducted by IPSOS in May, when prices rose 8.6 percent — the fastest rate of increase since 1981. It found that 81 percent of consumers are more empathetic towards small business owners raising prices due to inflation or shortages if they feel the business is providing excellent customer service. That’s compared to 41 percent of consumers who said they have empathy for large, multi-national companies that had to raise prices for the same reasons.
Having an established relationship with the business also made 73 percent of consumers more likely to accept higher prices, the survey found.
That’s good news for retail florists, many of whom use their customer service as a competitive advantage — especially to attract customers who want a curated and expedient shopping experience, says Tim Huckabee, president of Floral Strategies.
“They shop differently, and your shop needs to react differently,” says Huckabee, who will give a presentation on how shop owners and managers can cater to customers’ expectations at the Society of American Florists’ annual convention Sept. 6-8 in Orlando, Florida.
“If you’re not up to speed on the way things have changed, you’re doing your business and your customers a disservice,” he says.
Huckabee’s presentation, “Customer Service in a Post-COVID World,” will cover the shift in consumer habits and offer directives for shop owners and managers to adapt their businesses to those new habits whether they are selling on the phone or in-store.
“As an industry, we have to relearn the fine art of engagement after two years of socially distanced delivery and doing everything online,” Huckabee says. “If not relearn, reevaluate the critical need to be more engaging on the phone and on the floor.”
Huckabee also contends that despite higher prices, customers are still “willing to spend if we let them.” IPSOS research backs that, finding that 54 percent of consumers are still buying the things they want, and 57 percent of those whose annual income is $100,000 or more feel that they’ve saved enough the past two years to cover the higher prices for now.
SAF Orlando 2022 programming will also focus on how to attract and retain customers. The keynote presentation, “Great Expectations: Attracting and Retaining Today’s Flower and Plant Buyers,” by Melinda Knuth, Ph.D., a consumer market researcher at North Carolina State University, will delve into shifts in consumer behavior, how to leverage e-commerce for business-to-business and business-to-consumer sales, and break down generational preferences when it comes to buying behavior.
Click here for more information about SAF Orlando 2022.
Amanda Jedlinsky is the managing editor of SAF NOW.
