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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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How to Leverage Your Online Presence

“If you’re not online, you don’t exist.” This may be the most important truism regarding visibility in today’s marketplace. Indeed, there are whole businesses dedicated to search-engine optimization, online reputation management, and more. There are even now previously unheard-of careers like digital influencers and brand ambassadors. If you want to…
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The P&L Report of Mystery Shopping

The Brandt Group offers many detailed reports with which our clients can interpret the mystery shopping data we generate. They can identify big-picture trends or focus on the minutiae, covering your entire company, a regional division, an individual store, a specific department, or even one employee. Each report has its…
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Commandment No. 10 – Thou Shalt Practice the CANEI Principle

We have finally arrived at the tenth entry on Shep Hyken’s Forbes article, The Ten Commandments of Superior Customer Service, titled “Thou Shalt Practice the CANEI Principle”. What does CANEI mean? As Hyken explains, “CANEI is Dr. Edward Deming’s concept that stands for Constant and Never Ending Improvement. It is…
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Commandment No. 9 – Thou Shalt Lighten the Lines

The penultimate entry on Shep Hyken’s Forbes article, The Ten Commandments of Superior Customer Service, is “Thou Shalt Lighten the Lines.” Hyken begins by observing that no one likes waiting in line. He goes on to explain “the word ‘line’ is a metaphor for making the customer wait unnecessarily for…
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Everybody’s A Critic

A scant few years ago, the only reviews a local business would get were from friends who had been there, or perhaps a newspaper if you were lucky. Nowadays, however, all your customers are critics, and they have tools like Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Google Reviews to put their opinions…
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How Pen-and-Paper Can Revolutionize Your Time Management

Everything has become abstract and intangible in our increasingly digital world. Your family photo albums are just zeros and ones now. Online bill pay has done the same to your checkbook. Even your time-management tools like your reminders and calendar are in the cloud. There are benefits to this, of…
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How to Advertise with Style

A couple of months ago, two major wireless carriers in the U.S. sent out post-card style mailers to promote whatever new deals were coming out, respectively. Imagine that one of them had a lot of detail on it that clearly laid out which scenarios qualified for savings, covering everything from…
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How Your Restaurant Can Escape Bad Word-of-Mouth

Earlier this month, Nancy Friedman wrote a wonderful piece for RunningRestaurants.com titled “Excellent Restaurant Customer Service Drives Loyalty”, which describes the importance of fixing bad experiences. As she explains, customers will tell many more people about a bad experience than they will about a good one: “Word-of-mouth and social media postings, good and…
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