Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
policy so that all team members know what they can and cannot do if a
problem is raised by a guest. This is critically important if you are involved
in selling produce. Some consumers will complain and you do not want the
team member saying 'I will have to ask the boss.' You want them to resolve
the issue with the customer straight away and own the problem with the cus-
tomer. This can only be achieved once an empowerment policy is in place
and the team have confidence in it.
5.
Mystery shop audit. The key is to maintain a minimum standard of con-
sumer engagement in the business. The management needs to ensure this
standard is maintained. It is common practice in retailing to employ a profes-
sional mystery shopper to check on standards at least once every 6 months.
It is important that this shopper remains unknown to everyone on the team,
including the owner, to ensure that a fair assessment of the business takes
place. The mystery shopper should engage with as many of the team as pos-
sible and follow up with a report. This report should be made available to all
team members. Team members who excel in the report should be praised in
public in front of the rest of the team, whilst those who are below standard
should have the opportunity to discuss this with management in private.
We have seen many businesses who developed wonderful marketing cam-
paigns, but forgot that the team is involved in marketing as well. Word of
mouth marketing of a business is one of the most important methods, but
often the most neglected. Business should put aside money for training; as a
guide, many businesses place 1% of the labour budget aside for team training.
Training should be ongoing as it will make a major difference to a business's
bottom line.
Newsletters
Some customers prefer to have an online newsletter, whilst others will prefer
a hard-copy newsletter. The challenge for a business is whether it can jus-
tify sending newsletters out using the postage system as it may not be cost
effective.
Build a database of customers of your business; you then have the op-
portunity to write a newsletter to send to your target customers.
Building relationships with customers who have visited your establish-
ment is an important way of building loyalty. The newsletter is a well proven
way of helping in this process. It is not a sales letter or a direct selling tool,
it is a means of building a relationship. It should provide news about the
company, your team and consumer activities as well as produce and events.
The keys to developing a successful newsletter are:
•
Decide on a regular schedule and keep to it. Newsletters work most ef-
fectively if the consumer receives them every 90 days. Any more fre-
quently and they will often be treated as junk, less frequently and the
consumer thinks that the business has lost touch with them;
•
Keep it short. Customers are generally busy people and do not have the
