Unveiling the Art of Exceptional Customer Service with Sam Bowles: Rewind
Vonda and Lori are on the road this week — headed to an open house presentation at Bill Doran in Nebraska — so they're rewinding one of their favorite conversations: Lori and Ellie's interview with Sam Bowles, General Manager and Creative Director of Allen's Flowers in San Diego. Lori's recommendation is simple: don't just listen to this one yourself — play it for your whole staff. Sam is a selling and customer service guru, and this episode is packed with scripts and tools your team can use on the very next phone call.
From phone room to partner
Sam's path into flowers is the classic one: seasonal help. He was hired at a big Louisville flower shop right before Valentine's Day just to answer phones, knowing roughly "what a rose was." He learned on the fly, became the general manager's right hand through grad school, then moved to New York City, where family friend Tim Huckabee connected him to a shop manager job in Queens. After a stretch traveling and training florists with FloralStrategies and a year teaching high school English in Manhattan, a spring-break consulting visit to Allen's Flowers turned into a partnership conversation with owner Brad — and within three months Sam had driven a packed Scion from Manhattan to San Diego. Seven years later, Allen's has five locations with a sixth opening.
Hiring: trust the trial, not the interview
Asked for hiring red flags, Sam is refreshingly honest: after a decade of interviewing, there's no surefire tell. Great interviewees fizzle; quiet ones become your most reliable people. What matters more is setting crystal-clear expectations up front and using the trial period well. Holidays are the perfect low-commitment window — "all I can commit to is five weeks" — because nothing reveals whether someone can roll with the punches like a Valentine's week. He also empowers his managers to interview for their own teams; they know the day-to-day better than he does, and it shows them their opinion is valued.
Sam's three customer service tips
1. Be a good listener. Inappropriate suggestions aren't just bad sales — they're bad service. If a customer tells you their best friend just got a big promotion and you respond with "our arrangements start at $65," you weren't listening. Sam's tangible tool: give every salesperson a price chart for any quantity of roses, so when a customer mentions a 25th anniversary, they can confidently offer a custom design featuring 25 long-stem roses. Customers aren't insulted by a $300 idea — they're flattered you listened.
2. Give more advice. Customers already see you as the expert, so act like one. Swap open-ended questions ("how many bud vases do you want?") for recommendations ("your table seats 30 — I'd recommend at least 25 bud vases scattered down the middle"). Power phrases like "what I recommend" and "what I might suggest" sound confident, and confidence sells. It's also why a dozen red roses dominates every Valentine's Day: florists ask customers what they want, and customers say the only thing culture ever taught them. Offer the premium dozen instead.
3. Offer the wow. Don't hide your high-ticket items out of fear. Allen's sells "Wow Roses" — 100 roses in a vase "the size of a toddler" — for $500, and once Sam realized it cost nothing to leave the product turned on year-round, it started selling five or six in ordinary summer weeks. Big display arrangements made "just for marketing" in their downtown store sell within two days. The worst a customer can say is "tell me about something else."
Where florists fail: becoming order takers
Sam's biggest pet peeve is the reflexive phrase "our arrangements start at..." From hundreds of test calls, he's found more than half of shops default to it no matter what the customer just shared. His diagnosis: florists let the exceptions dictate the rule. One customer in a hundred balks at a big suggestion, and that one sting convinces a salesperson to under-serve the other 99. His fix is empathy-driven management — his customer service team knows they can hand him the worst ticket of the day, a get-out-of-jail-free card that built their confidence until they rarely need it. And when a customer is a terror, he pulls up the card message — often an apology for their own behavior elsewhere — to show his team: that person is the one with the problem, not you.
One more pet peeve worth adopting as shop policy: stop treating flowers as feminine. Sam still remembers the bubble bowl of free spirit roses he received for his birthday a decade ago. Men love getting flowers, too — sell accordingly.
Key takeaways
- Listen first, then echo the customer's own words and numbers back in your suggestion.
- Build a rose price chart so your team can quote any quantity instantly and confidently.
- Replace open-ended questions with expert recommendations — "what I recommend" is a power phrase.
- Keep luxury items on your website year-round; it costs nothing and they sell.
- Don't let one difficult customer in a hundred talk your team out of serving the other 99 well.