Encouraging Positive Reviews

We’ve long stressed the importance of maintaining your business’s reputation, as public opinion is slow to change and so crucial to your ongoing success. There are many factors that can influence that reputation, but one major concern is the reality that negative customer experiences are far more likely to result…
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Mystery Shopping During a Pandemic

Whether you’re a longtime mystery shopper, a dabbler, or a first-timer, you’ve probably wondered how this process works in light of the coronavirus pandemic. After all, restricted occupancy, social distancing, and facial coverings are sure to make any customer experience awkward and your task as an evaluator challenging—to say the…
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Finding Opportunity Amid Uncertainty

Even in the best of times, there has always been uncertainty in the marketplace, regardless of the industry your business is in. Trends come and go, the economy might be up or down, and even an election might change your company’s outlook. And because this is 2020—one of the strangest…
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Beyond Order-Taking

Let’s return to RestaurantRockstars.com’s Roger Beaudoin again for inspiration, this time for how to maximize profits and create an overall superior customer experience through good sales practices and quality options. To begin, we can see in another video podcast with RunningRestaurants.com that Beaudoin describes the difference between salespeople and order-takers. He…
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More Keys to a Great Restaurant Work Culture

More Keys to a Great Restaurant Work Culture Last week, we covered RestaurantRockstars.com-founder Roger Beaudoin’s first four keys to developing a great restaurant work environment. This week, we’ll detail the remaining points of his philosophical roadmap for ensuring a great customer experience. If It’s Not Fun, Why Do It? Beaudoin…
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The Keys to a Great Restaurant Work Culture

RunningRestaurants.com recently posted a recorded call with Roger Beaudoin (founder of RestaurantRockstars.com) to explain what makes for a great working environment in a restaurant. His eight points act as a sort of philosophical roadmap for how to maintain a healthy culture that will ultimately deliver the best customer experience possible.…
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The Heart of Great Customer Service

Over the last several weeks, we’ve taken a look at Shep Hyken’s 2020 special report on achieving exceptional customer service. To wrap up, let’s take a look at what attributes help separate a great from a poor experience. There are a number of positive factors, of course, as Hyken notes…
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Communication Channels and the Customer Experience

A business’s ability to communicate with its customers is critical for its long-term survival. Sales, services, and support all rely on communication, otherwise we might as well all shop from mail-order catalogs. For decades, the two primary channels for doing so were either in-person or were over-the-phone. But since the…
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Exceeding Expectations

Let’s dive back into Shep Hyken’s 2020 special report, continuing where we left off from last week. The next topic concerns consumer expectations, which Hyken measured by asking respondents “to rank industries based on what level of customer service they expect to receive”—not their actual experiences, just what they anticipated.…
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