Working out a customer's average spend in a florist

Speaker 1: Hiya, I've filled out my loyalty card, so I've come in for my free bouquet and wondered how much I have got to spend?

Speaker 2: Lovely. Do you mind if I leave that with you to work out?

Speaker 3: OK. What we do is add up all the different amounts of your last 10 purchases.

Then I figure out your average spend and that's how much you will get free in flowers today.

Speaker 1: I've seen a really lovely bouquet out front for £22.00 so fingers crossed I've got enough for that one.

Speaker 3: Let me check.

(TO AUDIENCE) Looking at these amounts, I can see that most of them are around £20.00.

Some a bit more, some a bit less.

So I'd estimate that the average spend will be somewhere between £20.00 and £30.00.

But I need to work it out properly.

Speaker: So, I've got the customer's loyalty card which is filled up with her last 10 visits, and now she can get free flowers to the value of her average spend.

I'll need to work out the average by adding up the different amounts she spent on each visit and dividing by the number of purchases which here is 10.

£2467.50? Oh no, I've missed a decimal point somewhere. Let me try again.

20, 40, 20, 17.50, 10, 30, 22.50, 20, 40, 20

£240.00. That sounds better. I'm going to do it one more time though to be sure.

OK, well that's right then. To get the average, I need to divide by the total number of purchases which is 10.

240 divided by 10 is 24.

That's £24.00. So that's roughly what I'd guessed at the start.

And the customer will be happy, she can afford the bouquet she fancied.

Speaker 1: Hi Eloise.

How did you get on with the loyalty card?

Speaker 2: Yeah great thanks. But the first time I added it up on the calculator it came up to over £2000.00.

Speaker 1: Oh wow. Thing is with calculators is when you're putting lots of numbers in it's so easy to get them wrong.

So it's always good to think about it and do an estimate if you can.

Then you can spot to see if that happens. So what exactly did you do?

Speaker 2: So I added up all the amounts and then checked it again really carefully and it came up to £240.00.

Then I divided it by 10 to get her average spend which was £24.00.

So the customer's going to be really happy because she had her eye on this £22.00 bouquet.

Speaker 1: That sounds great. Let me show you how I do it without a calculator.

Just using the loyalty card. I add the easy numbers first.

That's the ones that are just in 10s:

20, 60, 80, 90, 120, 140, 180, 200…

Then I write that number down.

Then the trickier ones with pounds and pence.

And then add it up as a simple sum.

Speaker 2: Great, I like that.

Speaker 1: It's easy isn't it?

Is that the customers flowers? And a very nice bouquet she is getting too.