What are your procedures?

Anyone who’s worked in a business may now be groaning at the screen and procedures are one of the things that can make employees the world over groan, but the basic bottom line is

How do you do it, so you can do it again and again?

and more importantly, how do you do it, so someone else could do it for you?

Lets take an example of taking an order for a bouquet that needs to be delivered.

Things to think about are

How are you going to allow people to contact you?
How quickly are you going to respond? And will it always be a positive response? (Or will you set up a system to respond for you?)
How far in advance can they place an order?
Can they place an order for the same day?
What information will you need from them, to fulfil the order?
How will you remind yourself to fulfil the order?
How will you communicate with them what time the order will be fulfilled?
What will you do with the information you have from the customer when the bouquet has been delivered?

Unless you can write down the answers to all of these questions, and know exactly what your procedure is and how to explain it to customers, then you won’t look professional in any of your dealings with your customers.