AI agents for florists

A florist's shop is a design bench, a cooler and an order desk. Designers condition flowers, build arrangements and talk clients through price, type and the date, time and place of delivery. The owner buys from wholesalers, prices recipes, manages wire-service membership and plans the holidays. Drivers run the day's deliveries. Wedding work adds consultations, proposals with recipes and stem counts, and contracts.

The pressure comes in peaks: holidays, weddings and funerals. Sympathy orders arrive by phone, website and wire from people who are grieving and unsure of the details, and a spray that reaches the wrong chapel cannot be fixed. Wire orders need a quick yes or no. Routes have to fit funeral times, hospital desks and "before noon" promises. Senders call to ask whether the flowers arrived, and the answer is on a scrap of paper in the van.

The agent works from the shop's order system and last year's sales, and prepares drafts for the designers and the owner.

• Takes sympathy orders through a checklist that confirms the funeral home, service time and where the flowers go.
• Drafts the day's delivery routes around funerals, hospitals and promised times.
• Reviews incoming wire orders against the shop's rules on value, stock and delivery zone.
• Turns wedding consultation notes into a draft proposal with recipes and stem counts.
• Plans holiday flower prebooks from last year's orders.
• Prints care cards for each order, with a clear warning when lilies go into the arrangement, because the ASPCA lists them as toxic to cats.
• Watches for ads and listings that pose as the shop and keeps screenshots as evidence.

Design and substitution choices belong to the designers. Price quotes, contracts and the decision to accept or reject a wire order belong to the owner. Card messages written by mourners are never rewritten, and the agent never contacts a grieving family or a funeral home: every such message comes from a person. When the agent finds an ad posing as the shop, the owner decides whether to report it. Card numbers never pass through the agent, wire orders settle through the network, and occasion reminders go only to customers who opted in.