If you're in the flower business, there's no question about which day of the year is your busiest. Valentine's Day "is our Super Bowl," UrbanStems co-founder Jeff Sheely told me last year. If we're going to run with that analogy, UrbanStems seemed to have played more like the Falcons than the Patriots this year.
The D.C.-based flower delivery startup has been on a solid trajectory as of late. Last year, the company raised at $6.8 million Series A round. It expanded into new markets in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and just recently Austin. After the Series A raise last April, co-founder Ajay Kori told DC Inno his company is growing "500-600 percent year over year and that growth is accelerating."
But on the biggest day of the year for flower deliveries, UrbanStems seems to have stumbled. Yesterday afternoon, dozens of users on social media began to chirp at the company about late or missing deliveries. Initially, UrbanStems customer service was responsive and apologetic, tweeting back to asking for tracking numbers and giving updates on when customers could expect their deliveries. Then just after 5 pm, its Twitter account (and, by many user accounts, phone lines and email) went dark.
The company seemed to come online again around 9 pm but damage had already been done. Multiple angry customers complained about deliveries that hadn't yet arrived, significant others who had stayed late at work waiting for flowers, and being unable to get in touch with customer service. Many of the customers had placed orders days or weeks in advance and questioned why the company was still advertising orders the morning of Valentine's Day when UrbanStems should have been aware of how overextended the staff would be.
First and last time ordering from @SendUrbanStems. Not only did they fail to deliver, but wouldn't answer calls. Unhappy Wife!!!
— Brian Nakash (@BrianNakash) February 15, 2017
@SendUrbanStems, really disappointed. It's 10:00 and still no flowers. Not delivering flowers I ordered a week ago, esp on vday.. #fail
— changzone (@changzone) February 15, 2017
@SendUrbanStems my delivery is seven hours late, no reply after 3 emails to your @care account. Can I at least get an ETA? It's midnight!
— Laurence Pevsner (@Lpevs) February 15, 2017
"To put it bluntly, yesterday was the most difficult day in the history of UrbanStems," Kori told DC Inno in a statement. "As a young company, we were very ambitious in our plans to send as many gifts as possible, and despite months of planning, we underestimated the staff needed to deliver on our promises. There is no excuse for that, and worst of all it was compounded by our customer happiness team not having enough people to communicate with our customers as issues arose."
UrbanStems was not alone in its challenges—Twitter mentions for The Bouqs, another venture-backed flower company, show a similar array of customer issues. To be sure, social media accounts are not always the most accurate reflection of customer sentiment. There are probably hundreds of UrbanStems customers who got their flowers delivered without a hitch. UrbanStems declined to provide figures on what percentage of orders were affected.
However, in a digital world, customer reviews are important; and while the frustrated tweets will fade into cyberspace, the flood of one star Yelp reviews could pose a lasting challenge. Kori says it was a difficult day for UrbanStems but the company is working to repair its relationship with customers who had less than ideal experiences.
"It was an extremely tough lesson to learn, but we are working tirelessly to do whatever it takes to fix this, including calling each individual customer whose delivery was affected to make it right."
Kori also told DC Inno that UrbanStems has refunded every customer whose order was not delivered on Feb. 14 and are still working to fulfill those orders or giving users the option to cancel for a future credit. The company is also shutting down its site for new orders for the rest of the week to focus on customer response.
