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Grow your business through employee training, improving company communication and morale and inspect what you expect through mystery shopping reviews.

How Employees Impact the Customer Experience

Shep Hyken’s Achieving Customer Amazement 2021 report is out now, and one of the breakdowns he gives are the elements that add up to a great overall experience. His research uncovered that the following customer-service elements are either important or very important: employee knowledge, employee kindness and helpfulness, ability to…
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Personalized Care

It’s that time of year again: Shep Hyken has released his annual Achieving Customer Amazement report, which means we’ll analyze his findings and explain what they mean for your business’s customer experience in the coming weeks. For today, however, let’s start with a key takeaway about how important personalized customer…
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Incentivizing Great Mystery Shop Scores

Mystery shopping’s most important function is to serve as a training tool. That’s not the only function, of course: mystery shops are important for monitoring how effective your merchandising is or whether customers are enjoying or even understanding your product options, among other uses. But training should be its primary…
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How Mystery Shoppers Score You

The Brandt Group specializes in co-developing with you your business’s customer experience, which is done by tailoring a thoughtful customer service with quality salesmanship and branding. Focusing on these facets will ensure long-term customer loyalty and enhanced profits, which will propel your business into years of long-term success. To accomplish…
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How Job Satisfaction Can Combat the Labor Shortage

There’s a labor crisis that, as Forbes reports, may be here to stay. Many are quick to point the finger at the broad availability of unemployment benefits since the start of the pandemic as the problem’s culprit, but it’s a problem that well predates COVID–19. “Comparing Labor Department data on…
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Be the Change Your Workplace Needs

Most people don’t like the idea of being tested, and fewer still like the idea of being subjected to pop quizzes—especially when they’re being conducted without your knowledge. It should be no wonder that many retail and service employees are wary of mystery shops, which are a lot like secret…
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Alternatives to “No”

No one likes being told no to something they want, especially if they think their request is completely reasonable. Being told no can turn a positive interaction negative, especially if it’s not handled well. Oftentimes, how you’re given an answer is just as important as the answer itself. Shep Hyken…
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Understanding Tough Customers

For anyone who has worked face-to-face with customers, you know there are just some people out there who—to put it delicately—are difficult. They’re seemingly impossible to please, expecting near perfection from you and your products. Not only are these interactions stressful, but they can go wrong in a flash. To…
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The Wow Starts Now

“The Customer Experience” is a catchall term you’ll hear thrown around a lot in the retail and service industries. It encompasses the entire interaction a customer has with your business, including everything from branding impressions, the store visit, and to what happens after—customer service, sales, and support. For a restaurant,…
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Avoiding More Common Mistakes

Last week, we took a look at Gene Marks’s article for The Hartford, wherein he explained many of the common pitfalls that small-business owners fall into. This week, let’s take a deeper look at a few more critical mistakes you should avoid. Don’t Overwork Yourself Marks admits that “running a…
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Avoiding Common Mistakes

Gene Marks, writing for The Hartford, has posted a great list covering many of the common traps small-business owners fall into, especially when they first get started. Many of these observations are important even for veteran business owners, so let’s look at a few today. Don’t Ignore Your Customers As…
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The Trust Economy

Reputation is everything. It encompasses every aspect of your business, from the quality of your products to the care you show your customers. It’s word-of-mouth, and it’s the number of stars on Google Reviews, Yelp, or whatever else. Perhaps most of all, it’s a measure of your business’s trustworthiness to…
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