Survivorship Bias

Can a business get away with only using feedback surveys rather than investing the time and resources into a fully featured mystery shopping program? The temptation is understandable, since a manager might think he can just put a few questions into an online form and pass a hyperlink out to…
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The Sunk-Cost Fallacy

A common saying is that hindsight is 20/20, that it’s far easier to judge a decision in retrospect than it is before the outcome is known. We all make choices in our personal lives and in business without knowing all of the details; sometimes we decide with incomplete or even…
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Demystifying Mystery Shops

Many small-business owners are new to the world of mystery shopping. They understand the gist in that that people are sent in to evaluate various aspects of their customer experience, but beyond that generalization, much of what companies like The Brandt Group do remains a mystery—forgive the pun. We value…
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Understanding the Labor Pool

Writing for Forbes, Emmy Lucas posted an article this week titled, “Five Types of Talent Behind the Great Resignation,” in which she details some of the personality types of people who’ve left their jobs in recent years. While many market watchers have attributed the Great Resignation to factors like early…
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Becoming the Standard

Many trademarks and company names have become so successful that they are now synonymous with their class of products or services. There’s even a term for this process: genericide. You know of many examples and might not even realize: Kleenex is often substituted for any facial tissue, Aspirin for any…
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Community Service as a Team-Building Strategy

If you type “team-building” into your favorite search engine, you’ll discover dozens of activities that are meant to help your employees bond with one another and work more cohesively. Some of these activities range from playing trivia games to telling campfire stories. While these exercises probably work well for certain…
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Customer Service by Example

Leading by example is one of those philosophies that most of us know and firmly believe in, even if we sometimes joke, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Concepts like taking responsibility, being a good teammate, and always giving your all, seem so much more valid when the…
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How to Manage Your Boss

Managing your own boss sounds oxymoronic, at first. We often think about management as being a downstream action, with someone above managing you, and you managing those further down the chain. As it turns out, the most effective leaders do both: they take the responsibility of making sure tasks get…
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Great Service, No Excuses

The pandemic has either created or magnified a myriad of problems for manufacturers, distributors, and businesses all across the world. Supply is constrained and delayed, and costs have risen dramatically. Add to this the labor shortage, and businesses are left scrambling to find a way to tread water, let alone…
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