What is the number one factor to propel mystery shoppers to 5-star ratings and all of the top jobs? Writing A+ reports!

There are a number of factors that help you become a top-rated mystery shopper, but the one that will help you the most is submitting reports that require little or no rework or editing.

Join me for our first teleconference of the new year on Thursday, January 12th at 7:00PM EST. Listen as I talk with Kathy Blumenstock, writer and editor for the New York Times, Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, as well as other notable publications, in addition to investigative reporter for Entertainment Tonight and blogger at AnimalPlanet.com.

KB, the name she uses among friends, is also a consultant for Market Viewpoint and reviews your mystery shopping reports! She is spending the evening with us to give real, useful data about what it is you need to write or change in your writing in order to deliver top-notch reports each and every time you hit the “submit” button.

Learn from Kathy:

• Why spelling, grammar and punctuation matter!
• Where commas make a difference and why we all use too many of them
• Weaving details into the story of your experience
• Staying factual in your reporting
• How to write what our clients need to hear
• Which common phrases should not appear in your reports

Kathy’s experience writing for newspapers, magazines, and her current blogging on AnimalPlanet.com will provide you with the expert advice you need to improve the writing and content of your reports.

Spending this hour with Kathy and me could make all the difference in the quality of your reports, and the income they can produce in the new year. Register now and we look forward to spending Thursday night with you!

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I thought doctors were supposed to be smart people. The more I encounter this population in the medical community, the more I see that they bring a lot of problems on themselves, including malpractice. Strong statement? You bet; but I’ve been seeing a lot to support this claim. I have several family members who are managing the various diseases that come along with aging including a family member with a cancer diagnosis. She is in the process of shopping for the right surgeon. She is knee deep in the healthcare system and like anyone else who has found themselves in this position, is struggling to make sense of the terrain. The one person a patient looks to for support and direction is their physician. This is especially true when they are dealing with life threatening issues. Things like communication, patience, compassion, and understanding become extremely important along with the doctor’s years of experience in their area of specialty.   

On a recent visit to a surgeon’s office our family encountered some interesting behavior on the part of the physician.

• He spoke too rapidly. He even knew he was doing this because he asked us to stop him if he was going too fast for us.
• He reached for and checked his beeper twice during the meeting with my family minimizing the importance of our situation.
• Despite the fact that it took over a week to get lab results back, he was unapologetic citing the recent holiday as the excuse for the delay.
• He required that the patient call for the results of her biopsy rather than scheduling her for an appointment in the office. This took away the patient’s ability to ask questions that immediately come to mind when they are given a life threatening diagnosis – like “Am I going to die from this?”  
• His staff was surly and dispassionate despite the fact that they knew they were dealing with a patient who had just been diagnosed with cancer.

Is it any wonder that this surgeon was not chosen as my family member’s surgeon? 

Here are some of the things this type of behavior invites into a medical practice:

• Loss of current business
• Loss of future business because of poor word-of-mouth advertising in the community where many people ask friends and neighbors for doctor referrals
• The establishment of an adversarial rather than a cooperative relationship with the patient, doctor, and their staff
• Poor patient outcomes due to confusion, misunderstanding, and lack of information
• Possible malpractice suits

No matter what industry you’re in, the cornerstones of any solid customer service program – communication, compassion, patience, and understanding are critical. This is especially true in the health care environment. As consumers we know this to be true not only on the macro level of understanding the intentions of our elected officials to revamp our healthcare system, but also on the micro level of our doctor’s offices.

Hmmmm…let me see. If I were a physician I would prescribe taking two doses of compassion…and call me in the morning.

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Vacation – it’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? Apparently not in the United States. ABC News reports that only 57% of Americans take all of their vacation time, compared to the French who use 89% of their vacation days. When I read these percentages, I wasn’t surprised. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been on vacation with friends who have assumed the hunched, round-shouldered position of typing into a Blackberry or laptop when they could be reclining on a beach chair soaking up the rays or hiking on a cool and refreshing mountaintop trail.

I, too, am guilty. The minute we see an email, text, tweet  or other form of correspondence from work, we immediately go back into “work-mode.” Those messages from the office start a chain reaction of worry and dread. With so many Americans concerned about the security of their jobs, it’s easy to understand why the old cliché “out of sight, out of mind” is so popular. If we are at least emailing and texting, we’re present and accounted for, right?  Seems that Americans will do whatever they have to in order to protect their jobs even if it means compromising their health and relationships. The popular trend right now is to take long weekends, but does this approach really allow us to relax and let go? Somehow I doubt it, but I guess it’s better than nothing.

But let’s look at the benefits of really taking time off from work and fully enjoying our vacation days:

• Reconnecting with family and those we love
• Reduced stress
• Improved creativity
• Improved job performance
• Burnout prevention
• Reestablishing priorities
• Creating vacation memories for our children
• Treating our customers better

As CEOs, managers, and supervisors, it is our responsibility to set the example for our employees. We need to let them know that it is not only okay for them to take time off from work, it is highly encouraged. If you haven’t had a vacation in a while, maybe it’s time you scheduled one. While you’re at it, schedule the next one, too. You’ll be ahead of the game and maybe even get a better rate for the flight.

Now if you’ll please excuse me, I need to hop online to see if there are any good vacation deals going on out there right now…I hear the beach calling!

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Like a constellation of praise, the little stars that represent restaurant and hotel ratings tell us we’re looking at something special. We do the same in business, from dry cleaners to daycare, choosing companies because their reputation for value spells excellent service.

But in these super-charged, 24/7 information-overload times, more often it’s the personal experience rather than the professional review that tells us what’s worth our money. I was recently planning a birthday dinner for a friend, talking to a colleague over coffee about her new restaurant, when a young man at the next table leaned over and said, “Don’t go there! The food is overcooked or too cold. The staff ignores you and it’s way overpriced.”

Amused, I thanked him and figured he’d had a bad experience, as a high-end restaurant couldn’t be that bad. But it was. Even worse, the manager was unsympathetic when I mentioned the problems. Multiply my experience, and the young man’s, by dozens of others, all with Twitter and Facebook friends, and you know how far our no-star ratings could spread. Kudos from your professional colleagues are great, but have you checked with your customers to see if they rate your service as five-star value?

How do you ensure that your customers think your product or service is top-notch?

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Ever see a receipt bearing the words “thanks to you, our valued customer” – and how often do you scoff? Especially when the receipt comes after you’ve scanned and bagged your own groceries, punched in your own loyalty code and made your own change. Oh yes, you feel valued: you’re doing the work of an employee and paying for the privilege.

This self-service practice, seemingly everywhere, saves money for the companies who pay fewer employees to deal with customer concerns, but what does it do for customers? “I went into a store where I’ve shopped for years and found new management,” a busy woman said. She’d stopped in, planning to buy a baby gift for a friend having twins, but she couldn’t find what she wanted and none of the employees offered to help. “I finally left because the manager was too busy talking on her cell phone to answer my questions,” she said.

This scenario could be repeated in any chain store coast-to-coast, with profits up and customer service scarce. “But we take care of the customers in my business,” you say. Can you anticipate what a customer may want or recall a service you provided a year ago? The gap between saying you value your customers and demonstrating how you value them is the difference between the customer who migrates elsewhere and the one who takes to heart the notation “we heart our customers.”

What new ways can you show your customers their value?

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