On your deathbed, would you wish you worked more or less?

Published on May 14, 2010 in Work/Life Balance. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

You may be disappointed to know that given a long enough timeline, despite the enormous efforts of doctors, rescue workers and other medical professionals worldwide, the global death rate remains constant at 100 percent.

If you knew your time would be up in a year, I bet you would work much less if at all, but statistically speaking, we will not die next year. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the average life expectancy of a new-born in the late 1990’s is 77 years for a male and 82 years for a female so working and building our asset base is part of our long term strategy.

So assuming we are the 80% of people who live to the new retirement age of 67 (Which may just change again before we reach 67) then the questions we must ask ourselves is how do we get the most out of our lives and what is our optimal work life balance?

There is no doubt that life in general is busier than in prior generations, my dad likes to remind me of that every time we speak. There are more “things” to buy, more mod-cons to assist us to be time efficient, although I am not convinced of that as an outcome and yet as a society we are claiming to be time poor.

We work more total hours, spread out over more days, and for many every day of the week is a working day. And yet the suicide rate is climbing steadily, again according to the ABS. Does this suggest that we work more and are less satisfied? Are the two linked?

Maybe the answer is individual.

Whatever your answer is, you may need to alter the amount of time you dedicate to the following areas of your life, to truly achieve your work/life balance.

Work/life Balance Wheel

Work/life Balance Wheel

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Is your product the problem?

Published on May 5, 2010 in Continuous Improvement. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

The majority of my time is spent educating and training staff on the value of customer service, store presentation, marketing, customer profiling and ensuring they can keep their food and labour to budget which are all important issues should a store wish to grow sales and/or customer counts on a local level.

Today’s post was found by Andrew Powell of Montreal Canada, sent to Dr Marc Dussault who then forwarded it on to me. It’s a great example of a promotional video for a Quick Service Retail operation.

Many of the business owners I meet and work with are frustrated with their sales and customer counts because they feel that they are doing everything they possibly can to ensure ‘EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE’ not realizing that the product itself acts as a barrier to sales growth.

What does your business do to measure customer satisfaction of your product and does your business act on this feedback whether positive or negative?

One business has taken the measurement and action to a whole new level not shying away from the negative feedback, they have embraced the feedback and as an entire corporation of 9,000+ stores made the changes that their customers have demanded of them.

Any Fast Food Franchise or independent operator would be well served to create a video that tells ‘their story’ like this. Please enjoy!

Further information on this story can be found at pizzaturnaround.com

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Customer Service Rule #2: A Smile Is Worth A Thousand Megabytes

Published on March 14, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

With the advent of sexy new Point Of Sale (POS) Systems, the line between personal and systemized customer service is getting blurrier by the day. Interestingly, 70% to 90% of what happens with customers is driven by human nature, having nothing to do with technology. We all agree that state of the art technology is a necessity today, but it’s meant to enable human interactions, not disable or interfere with them.[1]

This is so true with quick service retailing.

We have all experienced the customer service representative that ignores us in favor of their computer or POS screen. Trying to make eye contact or just get a response from someone absorbed in data entry can be annoying.

But here’s the thing most retailers don’t realise.

Even if a customer doesn’t remember being ignored, they may (subconsciously) associate your business with an (unknown, but felt) sense of frustration, distance or lack of ‘connection’. Those feelings will build up unbeknownst to the client and they may eventually take their patronage elsewhere.

Customer Service With A Smile

Customer Service With A Smile

The sad part of all of this is it all happens without conscious knowledge or intent. The client simply has no compelling reason to want or desire to return so he or she simply doesn’t.

That’s a killer for a retailer.

So what can you do to optimise the necessary POS data entry while offering outstanding customer service?

POS Customer service Tip #1: Continue reading ‘Customer Service Rule #2: A Smile Is Worth A Thousand Megabytes’

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Your Customers are Gold

Published on March 9, 2010 in Customer Service Tips And Ideas, Positive Training Solutions, Retail Marketing Concepts and Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .
Your Customers Are Made of Money

Your Customers Are Made of Money

I HAVE to break this to you, businesses cannot survive without customers. A business without customers is like a well without out water. Good customer service is the ground water that fills up your well. You’re high and dry without a reputation for taking care of your customers. Plus, the longer you keep customers, the wetter your well, because long term customers are more profitable. A 5% increase in customer retention can boost profit by 25% to 125%

Not digging the well analogy? Here is another way to think about it; your customers are money, gold to be exact, because they appreciate in value as time goes on. You may not think of customers as goods that can be bought or traded, but they’re assets to your company, just like stock investments or an office computer. They are them most vital part of your business’s economic machinery.

You pay hard-earned business capital to market to your customers, you essentially buy their patronage, one person at a time. Once bought, a customer will continue to generate your income, without much further advertising effort. On the flip side, customers who leave take with them every cent that you invested in marketing to them.

Customer retention is FREE MONEY! If you go the extra mile to keep customers, your marketing budget will go down, and your profits will go through the roof. You’ll have to ‘buy’ less new customers, and loyal customers generate some powerful word-of-mouth patronage.

Losing customers has the opposite effect, and can be truly devastating. And, you have no excuse for customers walking away from your business because of poor service, it’s the most controllable factor of your business. Technology can fail, accounts can pay late, but there is no reason to be rude or inattentive to a customer.

One way to gear up for fantastic customer service it to train employees to see each customer for how much they’re really worth. They may treat customers a bit differently if they imagined them as giant stacks of money or piles of gold. Each retained customer is (literally) money in the bank.

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iPhone Indulgence

Published on February 12, 2010 in Food Service Marketing Ideas, Retail Marketing Concepts, Uncategorized and YouTube Videos. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

How will you be marketing your business in the future?

This question is almost impossible to answer, because technology is changing at such a rapid pace and the bad news for you if you were planning to predict the future trends; the velocity is increasing at an exponential rate.

Terms such as “Social media”, “Facebook”, “Blogging”, “iPhone Applications”, “Convergence technology” which didn’t exist 5 years ago are now commonplace. A bevy of so called “Social media experts” are only a click away should your business need assistance and/or advice in this realm.

What did we do without this technology, and do we really need it? Is it an indulgence?

Take the Domino’s Pizza iPhone Application for example:

It’s a Pizza store in your pocket!

Ordering pizza pastas desserts and sides for pick up or delivery has never been easier, and most of all it’s fun. Order it anywhere anytime. It’s that simple. No registering online first, just download the app and you’re ready to go. Whether you are using it for the first time or the hundredth time placing an order is easy.

It’s your choice. Hot pizzas, pastas and salads or extras such as drinks and desserts. Fancy a pizza? View your pizza selection easily with the turnstile function. Found one you like? Tap the pizza to choose. A different screen will show you more details about the pizza.

In this screen you have the choice to select the number of pizzas you want, as well as the options to change the pizza base sauce, crusts or toppings, don’t want tomato but would like olives instead, no problem!

Finished customizing tap add to order and you will be taken back to the main menu to continuing ordering or complete your order. Your order details will update at the bottom of the screen in the ‘my order’ icon and will show how many item’s you’ve ordered and what the price is so far.

Finished, did you get everything?

Once you’ve finished, placing your order is easy. Select place your order and you’ll be taken to the payment page. Will it be cash or credit? Once you’ve selected place your order now your order will be sent to store and an order confirmation page will appear.

Once your order’s been placed with the store, you can track your order using the pizza tracker. See exactly when your order is being made when it’s cooking when it’s ready for pick-up is or when it’s on its way to your door. Keep your iPhone handy, track it and enjoy it.

What’s next, and will you and your business be at the forefront of technology or scratching your head wondering what the phone number for your local pizza shop is?

This app is only available at Domino’s Pizza thru iTunes.
For more information visit www.dominos.com.au

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Thank You Says It All

Published on February 1, 2010 in Customer Service Tips And Ideas. 1 Comment Tags: , .

We all know that saying thank you improves customer service… However doing it online sometimes is a little more difficult to do. Recently, Apple sent this to a client who forwarded it to me. I thought it was such a great way of saying thank you that I wanted to share it with you – to say thank you for reading this blog!

Thank You

Thank You

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Fast Food Franchises Are Like Brothels

Published on January 25, 2010 in Food Service Marketing Ideas and Retail Marketing Concepts. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I know that subject line caught your attention. That’s the whole point of a blog post or an e-mail subject line. It’s something I’ll talk to you more about in a future blog post, but for now, you must be wondering what the $^%&*#&??? And rightly so. What could a brothel have in common with a fast food franchise?

Let me start at the beginning -

Recently, I attended a Boardroom Briefing by Dr Marc Dussault, the World’s #1 Exponential Strategist and I thought I just had to share one of more than 100 ideas he presented – with his permission of course!

Dr Marc is constantly finding new and innovative ways to help his clients grow their businesses – exponentially. What that means is increasing sales 100 to 200% in 12 to 24 months. The only way to do that is by thinking as he calls it – antimimeticisomorphically.

In the fast food, quick service retail business, a lot of people think marketing doesn’t apply to them because retail clients don’t want to give their personal contact details over the counter.

That’s not unlike a brothel. Continue reading ‘Fast Food Franchises Are Like Brothels’

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Exponential Marketing Case Study: Napkin

Published on January 21, 2010 in Food Service Case Studies, Food Service Marketing Ideas and Retail Marketing Concepts. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Today’s case study is a really fun way to leverage a cost we all have in the quick service, fast food business: Napkins. This is a example of someone having fun and reinforcing their persona/identity in a very effective way as I am sure you’ll agree. It sure beats a BLANK Napkin or one that’s just branded with a logo.

Now I understand that as a franchise, you have constraints and limitations, but what I’m suggesting is that you make suggestions like this to your franchisor – to create themes of napkins that reinforce YOUR message.

Of course if you are not a franchise, you have no constraints or limits and you can do whatever you want!

Exponential Marketing Idea

Exponential Marketing Idea

This strategy was sent to me by the World’s #1 Exponential Strategist, Dr Marc Dussault. He is constantly finding new and innovative ways to help his clients grow their businesses – exponentially. What that means is increasing sales 100 to 200% in 12 to 24 months. The only way to do that is by thinking as he calls it – antimimeticisomorphically.

As an Exponential Growth Strategist, Dr Marc is always thinking outside the square – like in this instance (where possible) you can have a sponsor actually PAY for your napkins for the benefit of being co-branded on your napkins! That means you have FREE napkins and a new ‘partner’ who adds value to your clients. If you are a health food oriented store, you could connect with your local gym, pilates or yoga studio.

If you’re more in the mainstream fast food, you can partner up with the local cinema or night club to announce new bands or events.

You get the idea – once you think exponentially, it’s hard to stop!

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Shift Happens In The Fast Food Service Industry

Published on January 11, 2010 in Customer Service Statistics, Customer Service Videos, Positive Training Solutions, Retail Marketing Concepts and YouTube Videos. 0 Comments Tags: .

I created a short video to make the point about our industry. For example, did you know that in the quick service retail, ‘fast food’ industry, you’re competing with more than 30,000 companies? What are you doing to stand out? Check out this 3 minute video that will have you re-thinking your staff training strategies, if nothing else, you’ll be more aware of why business doesn’t seem like it’s getting tougher – it really is.

Contact us and get your competitive edge back. Customer service is the cornerstone of a successful quick service retail business. Without great staff, you’re fragile and vulnerable to a competitor who can quickly steal your clients. Don’t let that happen. Bullet-proof your business while you have more fun enjoying the process!

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Exponential Marketing Case Study: Pizza Shop

Published on January 5, 2010 in Customer Service Case Studies, Food Service Case Studies and Food Service Marketing Ideas. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

This blog is all about helping you create a customer experience that will wow, amaze and excite people to come back to you. I know, I know you think food is just food, but it’s not. We’ve already been through the cost of bad customer service and the reasons clients leave a company and switch to a competitor, now it’s time to start looking at strategies that you can use to GROW your retail food service business, by getting MORE prospects to become clients and then KEEPING those clients so they return over and over and over again.

Exponential Marketing Case Study: Pizza Shop

Continue reading ‘Exponential Marketing Case Study: Pizza Shop’

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