Customer Service Status of 2/9/19

There were some customers affected by my absence last month. For that I am truly sorry. I am working diligently to make that right. I got back into the office on Tuesday and spent all of last week shipping. 

We are working everything that needed shipping first and emails are going out in relation to those orders as they are being shipped.

Due to an unplanned labor shortage it was just myself in the office all of December. We did not anticipate this and as a result my number one priority that month was shipping. If an order contained a plant that I was unhappy with notes were taken with the intent to follow up on that order as soon as I got caught up with shipping. This also applies to any plants that were lost or damaged in transit. The Postal Service is notoriously bad about that during the holidays and we had a few packages that were mishandled.  

The follow up on these orders should have happened the second week of January, but then I experienced some rough times in my own life. Had our business been larger and slightly more mature this hiccup would not have been noticed by our customers, however since we were already short staffed it caused unforeseen and unintended consequences, and I am beyond sorry about that. I cannot express in words just how sorry I am. 

So where are we now? We got out almost all of the delayed orders last week, but we are still working through communication with our customers affected by the delay. This takes time, I’m not sending out mass emails, I am reaching out to everyone affected personally. 

Once these customers have been addressed, should be by the end of this weekend, I will start processing refunds for plants that did not meet our quality standards. As you know most of the time I ship these plants anyway, which is done at a loss and in good faith, so please try to be patient with me as I work through our notes and contact you. Everything that needs to be addressed will be, but I am only one person. I promise I am working through this paperwork as quickly as possible. 

We are not dead or dying, we’re in this for the long haul, but I do not think it’s fair to put customers who have been patiently waiting for a response on the back burner to list more plants, that is not a philosophy of mine. These customers need to be taken care of first and we need to make some changes to fulfillment internally so this does not happen again. 

So if you are reading this and are patiently waiting for a response I have not forgotten about you. I am working very diligently everyday to get our books closed for our first year. 

And if you are reading this and impatiently awaiting our next upload it is coming soon and I value your time too. The best I can do before we are ready to upload again is share my knowledge via a weekly blog post and share some things I have learned until we’re listing again (March). 

By end of business Monday, February 11th I anticipate having everyone with an open order addressed. There aren’t many of you left, but there are a few. 

By Monday, February 18th I anticipate having all of our paperwork done and to be fully caught up on our inbox. Just because we have taken a small step back doesn’t mean my inbox has stopped. There is a significant backlog of emails with things as small as questions related to text alerts to things that were order related, and important emails have gotten mixed in between. It is really hard to prioritize an inbox. 

For the rest of February I am going to regroup and put some changes in place to how we are doing things internally and we’ll be back stronger in March as a result. I sincerely hope you will return with us. 

In the meantime please look forward to a blog post every Saturday. I genuinely enjoy spending time with you and I feel it’s the least I can do until we’re back with fresh uploads next month. 

-Crystal