Managing Your Productivity: Striving for Zero

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks delving into how to improve your productivity with the processing and organizing workflow described in David Allen’s Getting Things Done book on the subject. One of the concepts we covered was the notion of an inbox, at which time we described this as…
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Managing Your Productivity: When to Say Yes

As we established last week, your time is a limited resource, so you have to wisely invest it into the tasks that matter the most. Returning to David Allen’s Getting Things Done workflow, let’s take a look at the “Is it actionable?” step to see what we should do when…
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Managing Your Productivity: When to Say No

Your time is a limited resource and you have to decide what you’ll spend that currency on. There aren’t enough hours in the day for you to do everything, and to be completely fair, when you split your attention among multiple tasks, none of them are going to be done…
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The Thermal Comfort Zone

In our third and final blogpost covering ambiance, let’s discuss how customers feel when they enter a business—specifically, what the temperature is like. How does a chilly room versus a warm room impact a customer’s experience? When it comes to the thermostat, can we really set-it-and-forget-it? Heating and cooling can…
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A Feast for the Eyes

In last week’s blog, we covered how background music influences the overall vibe of your business. As we said then, ambiance covers multiple sensory perceptions, including examples of how a restaurant’s freshly baked goods invite diners in, or even how merchandising can lure customers to visit. The concept of using…
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Setting the Mood with Background Music

Ambiance comprises multiple sensory perceptions: a retail store’s merchandising would appeal to the eyes; a restaurant’s freshly baked goods hearken to the nose; and the cool air on a hot summer’s day brings respite to the skin. But what about the ears? What are some ways we can make sure…
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Shake It Off

Our friend Steve Beck has a book titled “Leave Your Funk at the Door” in which he extolls the importance that salespeople and customer-service agents not bring in their personal baggage when they start their workday. (His advice applies to everyone in everyday life, really.) Putting on a happy smile…
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Setting Expectations

As Katherine Barchetti has said, “Make a customer, not a sale.” Indeed, one of the common themes of our blog is the importance of making the customer experience your top priority so you can do just that. There is nothing more vital than the lasting impression he or she takes…
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Delivering the Best Customer Experience

Delivering the Best Customer Experience Shep Hyken recently posted another invaluable article recently, “20 Tips on How to Deliver an Amazing Customer Service Experience”. Let’s do a deep dive on a few of his points to really reinforce the importance of emphasizing customer service above all else, even before the…
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