Customer Service Ideas
Suggestion: Expand Role of Garden Centers
Help your Garden Centers become the center of activity for the native plant/natural habitat movement. In the same way you've got the construction side of do-it-yourself mastered, start looking at the gardening equivalent: Go Native & Sustainable
- Develop local recipes to assist clients who want to create sustainable, native gardens and habitats. Mine (north Texas) is: full-sun, drought tolerant, zone 7, alkaline soil loving plants.
- Combine that with appropriate irrigation strategies. Educate consumers on the benefits of buried drip irrigation vs above ground, highly-evaporative irrigation, ....where appropriate.
- Consider offering rain barrels and installation services where your customers are experiencing drought
- Invite regional growers of natives to offer publications and materials to your clients. They mostly sell wholesale only, so going around your Garden Centers is impractical.
- Use your grounds, where possible, to plant what natives you sell .
- This does not mean making an exclusive decision regarding the sale of natural, organic, and chemical plant and pest control.
Suggestion: Step Up Service for Landscapers
Replicate for landscapers the level of service and attention you provide to construction contractors. Give them a separate, distinct place in the store to conduct business that's friendly for buying and loading.
