Which Industries Benefit Most from Mystery Shopping?

You might think this question is purely rhetorical, as there’s an argument to be made that all industries can benefit from mystery shopping. Given that The Brandt Group specializes in mystery shopping, you might also think that we would agree with the sentiment—and you’d be right, of course. But there…
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Role-Play as a Training Tool

It’s no secret that most of us learn best by doing as opposed to merely watching, which is why so many trainers recommend using role-play to teach customer-service and sales techniques. As an article at Ready Training Online explains, “Think back to how you learned to drive a car and…
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Employee Retention and Customer Loyalty

All businesses should yearn for high customer loyalty. Loyalty, after all, means repeat-business and word-of-mouth. The sales that come from returning customers and referrals don’t come with the typical cost of customer acquisition that eats into the bottom line. In a sense, customer loyalty is a lot like free advertising.…
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Principles for Great Management

Last blog, we discussed the qualities of great leadership, the personality traits someone has to either possess or develop to be effective at managing others. Today, let’s add some principles to these qualities. For inspiration, we’ll refer to an article at RunningRestaurants.com, which is geared towards restaurant management. As always,…
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Leadership Qualities

As a business owner or general manager, one of your most important tasks is delegation. On its face, delegation sounds like the opposite, like you’re trying to avoid a chore because you don’t enjoy doing it and would rather someone else deal with it instead. However, great leaders understand their…
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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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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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Are You Losing Customers to Bad Customer Service?

The customer experience is the most crucial aspect of your business, beating out even your products and service offerings in the hierarchy of whether customers choose to shop with you or with a competitor. This was confirmed again by Shep Hyken, who recently put out a “special report on customer…
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