UrbanStems is a wildly popular and rapidly growing modern floral and gifting company designed for thoughtful people. The company launched on Valentine’s Day 2014 with the aim to disrupt an outdated floral delivery system and provide a superior experience to its customers. Through expressive bouquets and plants, as well as curated gift options, they are helping people connect and feel more cared for even from afar. UrbanStems works with best in class designers to offer stunning bouquets and curated plants that fit every occasion. Today, UrbanStems is a team of more than 100 and offers coast-to-coast next day delivery and same-day courier service in NYC and DC.
UrbanStems wanted to provide a superior customer experience from cart to door. They pride themselves on creating beautiful arrangements in a custom box to both protect the flowers and provide a unique and instructional unboxing experience. The biggest challenge proved to be knowing where all of their shipments were at any given time so they could ensure on-time delivery. With 95% of UrbanStems orders being gifts, as well as being perishable and fragile items, UrbanStems had an extreme need to deliver as promised.
Delivering on-time proved particularly challenging during heavy shipping holidays like Valentine’s Day. A Valentine’s Day bouquet that arrives wilted on February 15th could land senders in the proverbial dog house and unlikely to order from UrbanStems again. Before project44, the UrbanStems team pulled a daily report that surfaced undelivered shipments from the previous day. Not only was this a full day after the delivery was missed, it took a senior member of the Customer Care team anywhere from 4 to 8 hours to manually decipher shipment codes and contact the customers individually to update them on the status of their delivery. This labor-intensive process resulted in costly and time-consuming calls.
As a fast-growing brand focused on customer experience, they needed a better way to integrate their order and delivery data to solve delivery issues in real-time, before they were late – and at the scale of the business.
“We saw results almost immediately in cost savings and efficiency gains that make project44 a critical element of keeping our delivery promises to our customers. Not only are our customers happier with their experience, but I’m delighted to share that our own internal care team is happier and more productive due to project44's platform.”
— Seth Goldman, CEO of UrbanStems
In January 2020, UrbanStems launched 3 project44 products–Engage, Recover, and Discover–to optimize the delivery side of the business. The Logistics and Customer Care teams worked together to choose and implement technology that would have the greatest impact on the business. The Logistics team chose Recover to unlock greater in-transit visibility and exception management and Discover to access real-time reporting across their network. The Customer Care team chose Engage for advanced communications capabilities and to reduce the expensive and time-consuming calls from customers.
With project44 Discover, the UrbanStems team can see all shipments that are Predicted To Miss their promised delivery date and contact the customer before they’re even aware of the issue. This new process takes even a new member of the Customer Care team less than an hour to verify shipment status on all delayed shipments and connect to customers at scale through the project44 platform. The result is a cost savings of 85% and a 75% reduction in staff hours.
project44 Engage enabled the team to send Reassurance Alerts to customers whose shipments were predicted to miss and cut down their WISMO (‘Where Is My Order’) calls and emails. These alerts provided certainty during uncertain times. Comparing Mother’s Day 2019 to 2020, UrbanStems saw a 63% decrease in inbound customer complaints about delayed deliveries even while experiencing massive year-over-year sales growth and extended delivery times due to pandemic-related transportation issues. The company also found that customers weren’t as upset about their missed deliveries because they were informed in advance, boosting brand loyalty and ensuring repeat business.
Simultaneously, UrbanStems used project44 Recover to gain visibility into all shipments in-transit across all carriers. Armed with the ability to identify issues from across their carrier network, the Logistics and Customer care teams are able to make decisions 4X faster than without Recover, adding fuel to the fast-growing brand.
Even when the best shippers in the country are experiencing delays, UrbanStems is thriving and connecting customers during a pandemic when they can’t be close.
