Welcome to the July 06 edition of The Dynamic Dispatch, the email newsletter of Dynamic Advantage.
We bring you better customer service.
Visit our online archive for past issues stuffed with tips and tools to improve customer service and sales.
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This Month’s Dispatch Data
- Service call: the taxing issue of compliance
- Tips & tools: inspect what you expect
- Exemplary shopper of the month
- Client testimonial: Winzone
If
you’re in the food service industry in California, the complexity of
monitoring your state sales tax collection can give you real
indigestion. Essentially, the taxability of food and beverage sales is divided into two categories:
• Food and beverages sold for consumption at your place of business, which are generally taxable; and
• Food and beverages sold to go, which may or may not be taxable.
Sounds simple so far – except, what does “may or may not” mean? By the way, the “to go” exception doesn’t apply if you are “located in a shopping mall and are near dining facilities provided by the mall.”
Clear so far? Because there are also “Other Tax Issues,” including:
• Employee Meals
• Complimentary and Self-Consumed Meals and Drinks
• Items Sold with Meals
• Tips and Other Charges
• Two Meals for the Price of One
And there are potential exceptions for student meals, meals sold by religious organizations and hospitals, meals delivered to the elderly or disabled, meals and food products served to condo residents age 62 or older, and so forth.
For the full PDF explaining all this, click here.
If it’s this complicated, how well are your cashiers handling this? Are they ringing up transactions correctly, and are you overpaying (or underpaying) tax?
We can help you find out. Proper sales-tax collection is just one of the compliance issues we can help you monitor – from enforcing company policies to helping ensure you’re carding minors trying to buy alcohol or tobacco. We can help you avoid the aggravation, grief, and fines associated with non-compliance.
Want to learn more? Call us toll-free at 866.870.1251.
The first question to
ask the next time you see an employee handling a customer-service issue
badly is this one, to yourself: Am I sure I’ve already communicated the
right way to do this?
The old management line is “You can expect what you inspect.” If you’re not going to inspect your own customer-service guidelines and training materials, you can’t expect much.
What’s the best frequency of review? Depends upon the company. Clearly, start-ups and quickly growing companies should review often – their situation is changing daily, and owners and managers will want to make sure customer service is keeping up.
Once you’ve got your policies set – and reviewed – the next step is performing actual customer-service monitoring and, depending upon what you find, either congratulating or correcting employees.
Not sure if your customer service lines up with your guidelines? We can help you find out. Contact us.
The old management line is “You can expect what you inspect.” If you’re not going to inspect your own customer-service guidelines and training materials, you can’t expect much.
What’s the best frequency of review? Depends upon the company. Clearly, start-ups and quickly growing companies should review often – their situation is changing daily, and owners and managers will want to make sure customer service is keeping up.
Once you’ve got your policies set – and reviewed – the next step is performing actual customer-service monitoring and, depending upon what you find, either congratulating or correcting employees.
Not sure if your customer service lines up with your guidelines? We can help you find out. Contact us.
Exemplary Shopper of the Month
Our Exemplary Shopper of the Month, CA2790,
shops in southern Orange County, CA for us. Hoa (whose last name must
remain a mystery) has been shopping casual dining establishments for
Dynamic Advantage for two years now and says she personally enjoys the
work because she likes helping businesses improve their service. Thank
you from all of us, Hoa – nobody likes bad service. And congratulations
on being Exemplary Shopper of the Month.
We
get a lot of great testimonials from delighted customers, but we were
especially thrilled to get this one the other day. It’s from an owner
at Winzone, a Burbank, California company with several businesses in
Southern California, including one of the most successful Cold Stone
Creamery franchises in the nation.
We take what we do very seriously – after all, this industry was built by our family 60 years ago. Our clients trust us, and that means a great deal. So to get this sort of testimonial really touches us.
My partner (Howard Davidson) and I were more than pleased with your service, and want to focus on the training benefits when praising your work.
We are sure most of your clients understand and appreciate the comprehensive evaluations you provide while monitoring their businesses. Your professional representatives who perform the visits and generate the reports are top notch, and your finished analysis is the closest thing to being there at your own business while invisible. Your long, distinguished reputation in this field is well-deserved.
When we received mystery shopping reports for our business in the Los Cerritos Center, we immediately called a staff meeting to address some of the issues your "mystery" shopping visit created. It was during this meeting that we realized the true value of your service. The residual benefits from discussing in detail the evaluation form were immense. Let me enumerate some of these:
1. Employees realized we were watching them through your trained professionals, and have pledged greater customer service and dedication to their duties.
2. They were able to recognize why not completely complying to our rules of sales and procedures was costing us important revenue.
3. Our staff wants to know where and when your company is coming back, which proves your effectiveness right there.
4. They admit now to treating every customer as a potential "secret shopper," and worry much more about proper conduct.
5. The lazy and complacent attitude many un-watched employees lapse into is gone, ...replaced by a more efficient and upbeat representative of our brand.
We think the training tool your service represents is probably overlooked by many of your clients, and we want to be quoted with our healthy endorsement of your service and style. These reports become worksheets for staff meetings, and should be posted for all employees to see and learn by. With our nearly ten years experience in the ice cream business, and the collective sixty years my partner and I have been supervising staff and their customer relations, we should represent the highest credibility in this field. We stake our reputation on the value of your wonderful "mystery shopping solution."
Please do not hesitate to give our names and phone numbers to any prospective clients, and thank you for the outstanding work you have done for our business.
With enthusiastic sincerity,
Dave Siemienski
Owner, Cold Stone Creamery franchisee
Regional Area Developer, Just Dogs Gourmet
Publisher, Winzone Publishing's "Local Merchant"
Visit Winzone’s Cold Stone Creamery franchise at 131 East Palm Ave., Burbank, next to the AMC movie theatre.
Let us know what you think! Email us at info@dynamic-advantage.com. We’d love to hear from you.
Dynamic Advantage | 866.870.1251 (toll free) | info@dynamic-advantage.com
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| Dynamic Advantage 356 East Olive Ave #118 Burbank, CA 91502 Phone: 866.870.1251 (toll free) 818.238.1251 Online: Dynamic-Advantage.com |