Does your company have steps of service? Silly question, right? OF COURSE, you have steps of service. From a one-man operation to a huge conglomerate with a myriad of employees, you must have specific steps taken with each patron in order to for your business model to work. Even resellers, B2B businesses, and other companies that do not directly sell a widget have set procedures and processes that are essential to the sales process.
Imagine you are a manager at a large restaurant chain that specializes in their own line of craft beer. Here is a typical problem you might face: one of your servers is a great employee, they are well liked by your customers and never cause problems with their coworkers. However, you notice as they are waiting a table they never once mentioned or offered one of your specialty craft beverages. You get a little worried, but watch them wait another table, again, not once did they try to sell one of your signature beers (True Story). Now what?
If they are not upselling your specialty beverages, what about appetizers, and dessert? How much money could you be losing per table? Per shift? Per employee? Per location? Daily? Monthly? Annually? What if you are a storage company and your employee does not log the lead who just happened to call in and ask a few questions? How many leads are you missing out on? How much did your company spend in marketing to make that phone ring? (Another true story)
Missing a few steps of service might not sink your business, but what if you are missing lots of them? Greeting your guest? Offering them a drink? Upselling an entrée? It does not matter the industry; the problem is the same. Restaurants need to make money upselling appetizers & desserts; Storage companies need to make money upselling packaging supplies & locks. Why does this happen? Improper training, lazy employees, simple mistakes, and a million other reasons.
For every hypothetical above, we have a client, and a story we could tell you. Missing steps of service is a tough problem to tackle, and we are here to help you solve it by giving your employees real accountability. Your employees want to be successful, but you might need to enable them to do so. Training is not enough, you need active monitoring. While that might sound overwhelming, there are tools that exist to make this easier. Companies like Mercantile Systems, Inc. (MSI) have these tools, and we make it our mission to help our clients ensure their customers are receiving the experience that you promise them.
You may think actively monitoring your social media can protect you from falling into one of these traps, but can it? Does the customer who was not offered a specialty beer go and complain about it on Yelp? No, probably not, they will give the location 5 stars because the waiter was kind, and the food was good. Mystery shopping is a tool that enhances your customer feedback loop, and allows you to optimize your revenue streams. It is the ultimate way to make sure that the devil is not lost in the details, and as such you can implement corrective action before it sinks your business.
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