The Choice Short-Staffing Forces

An ongoing challenge that businesses across the country are facing is short-staffing. At the start of the pandemic, many employees were furloughed or lost their jobs altogether, sending millions to unemployment. As our country has opened back up again, many of these workers have not returned to work en masse,…
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Understanding the Supply Chain Woes

The last couple of years have either created or magnified many of the economic challenges we all face today, not the least of which is the critical problem with supply chains. As Peter S. Goodman, writing for The New York Times explains, “The pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of…
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How to Survive Short Staffing

According to the National Federation of Independent Business’s October 2021 Report, nearly half of business owners report that they have job openings that they cannot fill. According to NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg, “Small business owners are attempting to take advantage of current economic growth but remain pessimistic about business…
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Setting Expectations for Your Employees

Every business has goals of some kind, even beyond the basic need to make enough money to keep the lights on this month. Usually, a business hopes to grow, to bolster its reputation, and to genuinely satisfy everyone involved day-in and day-out. These kinds of goals are often broken into…
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What Does a Leader Really Do?

When we think about the importance of designing a great customer experience, it’s easy to get hyper-focused on the frontline staff. This makes sense because these employees are the ones with whom the customers will be interacting the most, whether they are the servers at restaurants, cashiers at retail stores,…
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Lessons from Amazon

In this week’s blog, we’re going to cover Shep Hyken’s recent video, *How Amazon Sets the Standard for Every Business.” Before we even get going, consider how evocative that title is. It’s easy to imagine that there are a lot of business owners out there thinking that they don’t compete…
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Hospitality is King

For this week’s blog, let’s take a look at Danny Meyer’s outlook on the art of hospitality. Meyer is the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, which oversees the Gramercy Tavern in New York City, which in turn is a restaurant that is often voted #1 in any given year…
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Repeat Business vs Customer Loyalty

For our last dive into Shep Hyken’s ACA 2021 report, we’re going to take a closer look at rewards programs, and how they generate repeat business—and how this differs from customer loyalty. As we have in previous blogs on the ACA 2021, let’s first consider some numbers. Hyken asked his…
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Positive vs Negative Reviews

This week’s topic covers part five of Shep Hyken’s ACA 2021 report, which is all about how customers rate and review their experiences at different businesses. We all know that word-of-mouth is critical to maintaining a good reputation and driving referrals, but what do the numbers actually say? The first…
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