My mother was the CEO, also known as the business owner. Previously, she owned two businesses, both of which were ultimately unsuccessful. My mothers greatest strength is her persistence. Her greatest short coming was her english.

The flower shop had two employees:

• My step-father
• Me

My step-father was the COO, also known as the delivery driver. He had no experience managing a business, but he had a drivers license. His greatest strength was thinking outside of the box. His greatest short coming was his english.

I was in charge of speaking with the english speaking customers both in person and over the phone. I was also in 6th grade. My greatest strength was my english. My greatest short coming was my schedule because I was only available after school which ended at 3 p.m..

As you could probably guess, there was a huge problem between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.. There were no english speaking personnel at Judy’s and 90% of our customers spoke english.

At the time, we weren’t making a ton of money like our more successful silicon valley neighbor, Microsoft. And for some reason Giants like eBay didn’t want to acquire us, unlike our other successful silicon valley neighbor, PayPal.

This meant we couldn’t afford any world class english speaking employees. If we wanted to pay rent and put food on the table, the three of us had to make the business work ourselves. The only thing separating survival and starvation for our family was ingenuity.

We tried several things to work around the language problem. We eventually broke the situation down into several parts and come up with some strategies to deal with each one:

• walk-ins buying ready made flowers
• walk-ins placing a custom order
• walk-ins placing a large special order (funerals, weddings)
• phone orders

Walk-ins buying ready made flowers

This was the easiest because body language, a generous smile, and some finger pointing can go a long way. How else did America’s European settlers communicate with the natives?

For someone who wanted a quick bouquet or arranged flowers, it was easy to pick up something ready made. We made sure we had plenty in stock by purchasing an additional refrigerator (keeps the flowers fresh longer) to stock more ready made sets.

Good thing about flowers is they tend to sell themselves when they look pretty.

Walk-ins placing a custom order

Only a small minority wants something ready made. Most prefer freshly cut flowers in a personally chosen vase, similar to how we prefer to customize freshly prepared sandwiches, and hot out of the oven pizzas.

For these more picky walk-ins, we made sure to have dozens of booklets and brochures available with photos. We’d ask them to have a seat, cup of water, and to go through the booklet and to point at what type of arrangements they were looking for. No more verbose conversations.

We made a custom flower menu with photos of every type of flower we carried and how much each one cost. Not everyone can pick a Carnation out of a flower lineup, so it was great for the customer. Secretly though, the real reason was because my mother and step-father couldn’t pronounce “Carnation”.

Walk-ins placing a large special order (funerals, weddings)

This one was the trickiest for walk-ins, and I’d be lying if we didn’t see a good number of them leave. For an important occasion, people are less forgiving and understandably don’t want to risk miscommunication.

There were simply too many variations and too much money on the line to make this a finger-pointing affair (most of these orders are in-excess of $2000). We agreed that it was best to have this crowd come by after 3 p.m. where I could be there to translate and offer some reassurance. This meant from 8–3, my parents needed to delay and give a damn good excuse.

We practiced a few key english phrases during downtime. Here are some:

• “We have less walk-in and more time after 3.”
• “I want to give you lots of time and help you pick the perfect flowers.”
• “I have lots walk-ins before 3, we can talk for longer after 3.”
• “Do you want to make appointment after 3?”

We also made it a rule to always seem like we’re busy with something in the backroom, so that when the customer walks in, they see us walking out from the backroom to backup these claims of being busy. Details matter!

Phone orders

This was by far the most difficult to work around.

Technology hasn’t given us the ability to convey ear-to-ear smiles or finger-pointing over the phone. And unlike the walk-ins with large orders, we couldn’t possibly rehearse an entire phone conversation describing the difference between a rose and a lily. This is as verbose and complex as english gets.

We lost 9 out of 10 for every phone calls that rang in.

If we somehow managed to keep them on the phone, we’d often have mistakes in the notes we jotted down like the expiration date on the credit card, the apartment number for delivery, or the message they wanted on the card. Turns out people who can’t speak english very well also can’t take notes in english very well, especially when people are talking too fast. Who knew?

When I called back to get the correct information or to verify the order, it was a 50/50 chance that they’d cancel the order because they realized how incorrect things were. It was a crippling disaster.

We tried a few tactics, like letting the calls hit the answering machine and asking them to leave their info. My parents even went as far as lending me their cell phone to keep in my backpack so I can field calls during lunch via call forwarding. It was pretty nerve wrecking to make sure the phone was off during class or I risk getting our business phone confiscated by the teacher.

What we finally did was nothing short of our greatest ingenuity. While technology didn’t let us point over the phone, it did let us record the conversation for play-back later with something like this.

Over the phone, we couldn’t respond with suggestions or anything really intelligible, but we could be overwhelmingly positive and reassuring with lots of “Yes” and “Ok’s” regardless of what was said on the other end. The goal was to get them to talk and record all the information, and then correct mistakes later in a callback.

The conversations were very one sided and very awkward at times:

“My wife’s birthday is this Saturday, and her favorite colors are white and blue. Can you suggest anything?”

“Ok, yes.”

…but at least the information I was working with was accurate. And it’s easier to apologize later than to say no now.

People were also more forgiving when you called back saying we have a beautiful blue vase that goes perfectly with a dozen white roses.

We managed to complete 6 out of 10 phone calls with this new system.

It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. And I could finally enjoy my lunch at school.

Takeaway

I’m not sure we would’ve approached things the same way if our backs weren’t against the wall, but we had to do what we could to make ends meet.

I noticed a little bit of ingenuity and shamelessness for screw-ups can go a long way. People are surprisingly forgiving as long as you’re polite and trying.

Sure we had customers who were pissed off from incorrect orders, but you can’t please 100% of the people out there to begin with so it’s an impossible goal — those who work retail can relate. Apologize, make it up, and try something new next time.

At least you speak the same language, right?