We recently came across information that substantiates how Employee Recognition leads to better business outcomes. We found it in the book The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their Employees, Retain Talent, and Drive Performance and we couldn’t agree more with what the authors have to say.   

Clients tell us that our Mystery Shopping Programs deliver the perfect foundation for employee recognition.  Along with delivering the management tools of monitoring and measuring the standards and goals behind the customer service operations of your business. Mystery Shopping Programs deliver recognition potential from individual interactions to tabulated summary results based on a program.  Giving businesses plenty of opportunity to incorporate recognition and use it as a tool to “Accelerate Performance.” Click here for the downloadable white paper.

In fact, we know that Recognition leads to Results. This is why we have built recognition into our Mystery Shopping Programs and even practice it ourselves. We have seen scores jump as high as 10% in a month from implementing simple email congratulations to managers at individual locations for use with employees.  And we practice what we preach, by sending out email recognition to all shoppers who do an exemplary job for us each month.   We have seen this improve reporting, strengthen our relationships, and create good will among our database of Mystery Shoppers.  Here are some of the comments we get from our shoppers about our recognition emails:
 

Shopper MI7300 “Thank you for the lovely compliments.  You sure made my day!”
 
Shopper RO5162 “Thank you. It's nice to hear the positive instead of the negative.”
 
Shopper TR5929 “Thank you for the email - I've never been recognized by a shopper company before.  I appreciate it!”
 
Shopper LA8487 “Wow! Thank you for the nice note. It's rare and appreciated.”

Out in the field: California State University

We’re missionaries about customer service, spreading the good word wherever we go here or abroad in speeches to local associations, colleges and universities, major corporations, and others. It’s important to us because we know how much a bad customer-service experience can ruin someone’s day. Everywhere we go, people seem to understand that and are eager to hear how easy and inexpensive it is to improve how customers get treated.

Our most recent speaking engagement took us to California State University Northridge, where Stefan Doomanis addressed professor Art Shulman’s marketing class. Stefan spoke about monitoring and improving customer service, and how to match that with a marketing campaign that multiplies the effect. (“Do good work – and also be known for it.”)

In addition to feeling good about helping to educate the next generation, this provided a good refresher for Stefan prior to his next engagement, a series of discussions and meetings in Japan.

Would your group benefit from a discussion about offering high-quality customer service? Email Stefan.