- In the first of a series of articles, David Lipton discusses how to train staff to become customer service specialists

By David Lipton
February 2000, Foodservice and Hospitality

It was once said that any business is only as good as the people in it. That sentiment is especially true in today's competitive Canadian marketplace, where U.S.companies with premier customer service techniques continue to infiltrate every sector of the economy, including the foodservice industry. But while it's also true that Canadian companies must learn to match U.S. customer focused training procedures and effectively teach and maintain staff to provide top notch service, outstanding customer service is difficult to duplicate, making it one element that still distinguishes a successful business from the crowd.

It's also been proven that businesses that treat both customers and employees well are more successful, with numerous studies confirming that staff treats customers the way management treats them. In other words, happy employees equal good customer service and increased revenue. Joel Ward, a business teacher for Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont., agrees. "Businesses should do everything to satisfy their customers and employees.Operators have to ask themselves what type of company they are trying to build - a money machine or a legacy company," he says. "Building a legacy company collaborates what best meets the needs of everyone involved: the company, employees and customers."

As chairman of Burlington, Ont. based SIR Corp., Grey Sisson heads some of the most customer focused restaurant chains in Canada. According to Sisson, customers expect outgoing and enthusiastic service. "Effective customer service is an important part of the total experience," he says. "It's the service, food, quality and value that help make up the whole package. It's important for customers to be recognized, acknowledged and attended to in a pleasant and friendly manner in order for them to feel the complete dining experience. Nothing upsets customers more than a server who lacks personality."

But what happens when companies hire enthusiastic staff, train them to be outstanding customer relations people, then fail to follow up the training with some type of monitoring program? Many companies spend millions of dollars on training and nothing changes, especially as studies indicate that 60 percent of the information discussed during a training sessions is forgotten before employees leave the class, and an additional 30 percent is forgotten within the first week. Without reinforcement and monitoring for compliance, employees quickly revert to their habitual ways of completing their job tasks. The assumption is made that the information was great, but there is no mechanism in place for employees to integrate the knowledge into their daily routine. In reality, however, developing a new behaviour takes three to four weeks of continuous reinforcement and focus.

One way companies can help their employees focus on becoming customer service specialists is through mystery shopping programs. Unlike consultants, who offer advice on running a business, mystery shoppers evaluate a company based on the business' own standards and criteria in order to tell the owners whether or not it is operating in the manner they desire. They are also effective in uncovering whether or not the policies and procedures developed by an organization are in place and are being followed correctly. A variety of methods can be used to evaluate an operation, including site inspections, telephone calls, visits to websites and e-mail communication evaluations.
According to a recent Statistics Canada study entitled Creating the capacity for Survival and Growth, four out of five new companies in Canada fold within the first 10 years. Those that do survive stress high quality products, customer focus and solid business fundamentals as key to their success. In addition, superior customer service and flexibility in responding to customer needs, as well as marketing strategies focusing on satisfying existing customers, are just as important as price. These winning companies also cite skilled and motivated employees as equally important to the success of the business as skilled and motivated management. As a result, more than half of the successful firms that participated in the study invested in upgrading employee skills.ail communication evaluations.
According to a recent Statistics Canada study entitled Creating the capacity for Survival and Growth, four out of five new companies in Canada fold within the first 10 years. Those that do survive stress high quality products, customer focus and solid business fundamentals as key to their success. In addition, superior customer service and flexibility in responding to customer needs, as well as marketing strategies focusing on satisfying existing customers, are just as important as price. These winning companies also cite skilled and motivated employees as equally important to the success of the business as skilled and motivated management. As a result, more than half of the successful firms that participated in the study invested in upgrading employee skills.

Canadian companies should view this sort of information as a wake up call to improve their methods of hiring, training and maintaining employee enthusiasm. After all, it will be the winning companies - the ones which continue to offer a competitive price, good products and high quality customer service - that will outlast their competitors for years to come.

By Murray McNeill, Business Reporter

In a variation of the proverbial fly in the soup, a customer goes to a family restaurant for dinner and discovers a dead fly in his salad.

In another case, a hotel guest mentions to an inquisitive bellhop that he and his wife are celebrating their anniversary.

A few hours later a bouquet of flowers and a gift basket are delivered to their room, and the hotel manager calls to congratulate them.

What's the connection? In both cases, the customers involved were "mystery shoppers" - people hired to pose as customers to see if a retailer's staff training and customer service programs are producing the desired results.

Retail industry officials say that while mystery shopping programs have been around in some form or another sice the 1950s, their use has grown substantially in the last 5 years. Increased competition and higher consumer expectations have prompted many retailers to focus more time and resources on establishing and maintaining a high standard of customer service.

Increased demand for these services is reflected in the growing number of companies that are offering them. Mark Michelson, president of Atlanta-based Mystery Shopping Providers Association, said about 15 companies in Canada offer mystery shopping services, where 15 years ago there were perhaps two.

Winnipeg-based Probe Research Inc., got into the business about a year ago, and now has a pool of about 30 people, ranging from university students to retirees, that it uses as shoppes.

Rosemary Fletcher, Probe's director of consumer research and evaluation, said although their services have been used mostly by financial institutions, they can be tailored to a variety of retail operations.

Helen, a 40-year old "semi-retired" Winnipegger, is one of Probe's mystery shoppers. She has to remain anonymous to continue to do her job. Helen said she's visited eight to 10 financial institutions in the last four to five months, posing as a customer interested in obtaining a mortgage or a car loan.

Among things she watches for are how staff greet her, how long she has to wait for service, and how effective the loans officer is in meeting her needs.

"It can be a little bit nerve-racking," she admitted. "But it can be fun and it can be interesting."

Winnipeg entrepreneur Brenda Andre tried out a mystery shopping program for the first time last summer at her nine Perkins Family Restaurant and Bakery franchises in Western Canada, including five in Winnipeg. She said she was so thrilled with the results, she's making it an annual thing.

"It really keeps everybody on their toes," Andre added.

Lissa Cychowski, Andre's director of marketing, said the program they use has mystery diners visit each restaurant on a number of occasions between June 1 and Aug. 31. The firm that provides the service usually forwards an evaluation report within 72 hours of each visit.

Cychowski said the restaurants' staff don't know who the mystery diners are, or when they are going to show up. The kinds of things the diners look for include how long it takes staff to greet customers after they enter the restaurant, whether they greet them with a smile, how long it takes to be seated, how long they have to wait for their meal, whether their servers ask if they'd like a beverage or dessert and how clean the premises are, including the washrooms.

Cychowski said the importance of good customer service can't be emphasized enough.

"Your can have the best food and the best decor, but if you don't have that customer service, you have nother," she added.

Diane Brisebois, president and chief executive officer of the Retail Council of Canada, said customer service has become a big issue with retailers in the 1990s because of rising consumer expectations and the expanding choice of products and services available to the public these days.

"If you want to survive in this retail environment, which is very competitive, you have to pay attention wo customer service," Brisebois added.

It's also critical that retailers tailor their customer service programs to the wants and needs of their clientele, she noted. For example, if they have the kind of retail operation that caters to consumers who want to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible, they provide a different kind of customer service that the retailer that catesr to consumers who want to come in and learn as much as they can about a product before they buy it.

Probe's Fletcher and David Lipton, president of a Toronto-based mystery shopping services firm - Sensors Quality Management Inc. - encourage their retail clients to use their programs to reward employees who provide a high level of customer service, rather than just focus on mistakes and weaknesses. Programs run that way are more likely to win the support of employees.

Lipton - it was his mystery shopper who found the fly in the salad and received the gifts from the hotel - said Canadian retailers and consumers began focusing more on customer service after Wal-Mart moved into Canada in 1994. He noted there was a lot of publicity at the time about how the U.S. retailing giants put a lot of emphasis on customer service.

He added that the kinds of retailers who use his six-year old firm's mystery shopping services include hotels, restaurants, retail stores, and doctor's offices.

Copyright © Winnipeg Free Press, 1999