Accordingly, we have now so devolved that the phenomenon of sameness has eroded the ticky tacky repetition of an inherently boring model to the point at which so many fight to sell ninety-nine cent Dupche Kapusta to every late night Dzebrak who still has a dollar in his pocket.

I believe that there is absolutely no economic reason on earth to invest upwards of a million dollars to sell the lowest common denominator products and services to the least able to afford anything customer base.

At that point one does not own a business in any real sense. I know that the 99 cent sandwich is not the raison d'etre of the QSR franchise industry, or of its equivalent in the services business, but it is in fact the focus of so much of its advertising message that it seems like it is. That is one of the surer signs of dilapidation of the brand.

At this point the entire ticky tacky approach should be rethought if the goal is to attract investors who are not themselves rather ignorant FranWad material to be fleeced in phantasy business proposals that have little or no likelihood of success. Anyone who follows the franchising horror stories today knows exactly what I am talking about with no need for further elaboration.

Yet there is no new approach on this horizon. So called franchising "concepts" that are not concepts at all in any real sense of economic opportunity abound.

They are sold to those who have no clue about pre investment due diligence who are told fairy tales about being able to rely on the FDD and conversations with existing franchisees as the way to satisfy themselves of the prospective soundness of an affirmative investment decision. Utter nonsense!

There are now affluent investors seeking real opportunities. Franchisors that are themselves serious about finding a more durable, less price sensitive proposition to sell should consider turning from the worn out pattern. There in another direction.

In my last article http://www.franchiseremedies.com/Selling-Investment-Worthy-Franchises.htm I described how to sell such an opportunity. Not I am going to suggest how that kind of opportunity should be configured.

Let's begin with recognition that the way customers find you is no longer focused so heavily upon signage, building configuration, color schemes and other visual references.

The Internet has made many profound changes in customer acquisition techniques.

So many go on line to find what they want, looking at sites that focus on what they want, from plumbers and electricians to dentists and places to dine.

That is the reference that enables what I am advocating here. The old mantra about putting a store within a mile of a McDonalds and making it look bright with a look that will quickly become an instant proclamation in a customers mind of your name - secondary meaning if you will - is not the reliable benchmark it used to be.

Today your store can look different at every location; comply with any sort of design theme; spend far less on interior brand identifiers like napkins with your name on them and things like that.

Today people are taught to go on line and find the directory where everyone who is in basically the same business as you is listed, together with focus aids like location (including maps), price range, ethnicity, hours of operation, special events, menus, wine lists, link to your website, and a special page for customers to blog their views about their customer experience with you - good and otherwise.

That is the ultimate game changer from the day when you had commercials about smiling brain dead people plastically endorsing you in terms only a moron would credit.

Illustratively, if you look today at a Liberty Mutual Insurance Company television advert you come away with the impression that Liberty Mutual only insures very stupid people who cut off tree limbs while their neighbor's car is parked beneath, without asking him to please move his car so he can safely cut off the limb.

Every one of their adverts has some similarly idiotic person doing something just as stupid.

In the world of television today, a Gecko is the smartest spokesperson there is. That kind of genre advertising focused upon less than room temperature target IQ customers will continue, but it has little to do with franchising going forward.

If the Internet focused website for even the semi literate to find everything they need or want is the reference point of the future - which I strongly believe it is - uniformity of logo display will quickly become less and less significant.

Franchising notions of the significance of uniformity are heading for the sewer in terms of usefulness.

The Internet is a qualitative informer. You will have to work on more substantive and really value significant messages other than price discounting.

You can no longer prevent unhappy customers from going to exactly where people look for businesses like yours and posting negative customer experience messages. Where does that leave you in your approach to franchising?

It leaves you to focus upon the individual store rather than the system of many stores. The individual store must provide an attractive look; excellent service; high levels of product/service quality and presentation; store ambience that is pleasing and appropriate.

It does not have to look like any of your other stores. You can now replicate the model without replicating the look, as the look is no longer a promise of desirability.

Model replication is now performance centric.

The performance quality just spoken of will yield financial performance quality with competent management and a competent management system.

Artificial requirements calculated primarily to generate extraneous revenue streams from franchisee to the pocket of the franchisor will still ruin store financial performance just as it now does with so many franchise concepts - think of the logo bearing napkins and tying in supplies entirely to designated suppliers that pay commissions to the franchisor on their sales to the franchisees.

(The temptation to abuse that to the point of franchisee ruination will still be there. There will still, therefore, be the Quiznos and Marble Slab Creamery models to personify franchisee impoverishment. But, that is another story.)

What is the marketing plan for this new franchise model? That is the message of http://www.franchiseremedies.com/Selling-Investment-Worthy-Franchises.htm . The franchising business is due for a major tune up. Hopefully this kind of upgrade in quality will be that adjustment.

I have always used a sales process, instead of relying upon magical phrases like: "Be Your Own Boss", or "In Business for Yourself but not by Yourself."  To the sophisticated probable investor, these and other phrases are trite.

There are six benefits to having a sales process - benefits for any sized franchise.

1. Consistent: With a specific and focussed sales process, a sales force can be taught, manage and coached to excellence.  Your sales process has to provide a consistent and professional face to the probable investor.  A sales process does that.

2. Repeatable: Standardized delivery to consumers is the heart of franchising.  Standardized delivery of your marketing message to probable investors is equally important.

3.  Less Work: A sales process will eliminate inqueries early on. You will stop wasting time & start closing more deals by working with less inqueries and more probable investors.

4. Accurate Item 20 Projections: Sales is an optimistic profession.  Too optimistic.  A salesman will give a highly optimistic opinion of which deals will close and when.  Just look at the item 20's in any FDD - how many projected openings year to the next turn into locations opened?  Not many.  A sales process helps the franchisor project gross royalties better.  And all planning starts from accurate numbers.

5. Manageable: A sales process has clearly defined steps -ones that could be outlined with a decision tree.  If you pay attention to what is happening in the sales process, it is easy for the sales manager to monitor that staff's progress to their quota or targets.

6.  Teachable: Because a sales process breaks down the complex sale into a series of steps, it is easier to learn.  New sales staff can progress through the complex sale without getting overwhelmed.

Finally, all franchise sales has to lead a probable investor through the questions that are important to the investor and not dwell on what you believe are the great features of your system.  If your marketing messages are not resonating with the probable investor, you need to know early on and move on.

Curious about how your Franchise Sales Process stacks up against the Best?

Connect with me on LinkedIn, and drop me a message asking for the "Mini-Audit".

You will be pleasantly surprised you did.

We don't believe you should scratch your head and wonder when you're being shown an idea or technique. That old KISS method (Keep it Simple Simon) is the best. So we have purposely kept all of the material in our programs simple - yet very effective.

I've heard: "Hey what you do is just plain old common sense." You bet it is. You won't get an argument out of us. But you and I all know that common sense just isn't that common. If it were, everyone would be doing it and we know everyone isn't.

Our DVD program ESSENTIAL TELEPHONE SKILLS is just that. A basic, common sense program - uncomplicated, yet effective. Ideas, tips, skills and techniques that everyone should be doing, but they're not.

So, this article is for those that simply want basic, common sense, healthy, usable techniques. Below are 5 of our 10 basic skills that are ESSENTIAL for better communications and handling of customers and, believe it or not, each other.

1. Answering a Business Call

Well, what's so difficult about that? HUH? Right! It's not difficult. But if I called 100 people within your own organization, I'm betting I'd get a number of various ways that people answer the phone.

At Telephone Doctor we believe there should be one, uniformed method of greeting to answer the call by everyone, every time. Simple.

To start, use buffer words that welcome the caller, such as, "Thanks for calling," then your company name and then your name.

As in, "This is Sue." Then stop! Anything after your name erases you name.

"How can I help you" is simply NOT necessary on that initial greeting. You are there to help. That's why you answered the phone. It looks like this: "Thanks for calling Telephone Doctor's office. This is Nancy." Nice and simple, isn't it?

2. Thanking a Caller for Holding

Being put on hold remains one of the top 3 frustrations of the American public. That being said, it's something that often needs to be done during a phone call. Knowing how to put someone on hold is certainly important, but then so is thanking them for holding after you've come back to the phone. Again, simple.

But how often is it done. I'm amazed at the number of times I'm put on hold and when the person comes back to the phone, they just start back in on the conversation like they weren't even gone. (Sort of like stepping on someone's toes and not says 'excuse me.')

And normally they're gone longer than they should be.

So that "thank you for holding" sure would sound nice and would sure be appreciated. I always wonder why they don't thank me for taking the time to stay with them. Do you wonder that as well?

3. Monogramming the Call

For whatever reason, we all seem to like our name. Maybe not when we're children, but as we grow, we become used to our name and like it. I have many items on my desk and at home that have my name engraved on them. Some just initials. But it makes them 'mine' and I'd probably never pitch them in a cleaning out process.

Why? Because they have my name on it. Most people save things with their name or initials on them. Same thing should happen on a phone call. When you know the caller's name, use it.

Don't abuse it, but do include it throughout the conversation. Most people like to hear their name. And they want to hear it pronounced properly and spelled right.

Don't be afraid to ask the caller the correct pronunciation of their name if you're not sure. They'll appreciate it! It's a heck of a lot better than you butchering their name.

Don't assume on the spelling of a name. ASK! Are you aware there are 19 different ways to spell the last name of NICHOLS in the New York phone directory? Not everyone spells their name the same way. Tom, Thom, Christy, Kristy, Charlie, Charley, John, Jon, Lynn, Lynne. Well, you get the idea. GET IT RIGHT!

4. Avoiding Mouth Noises

The telephone is a microphone. When you talk with something in your mouth, it sounds as though you have a mouthful of MUSH. Be it gum, candy or just finishing lunch. The only thing that should be in our mouth when you're on the phone is your tongue. Rule #1: EMPTY YOUR MOUTH BEFORE YOU PICK UP THE PHONE!

5. Leaving a Positive LAST Impression

Most of us have been taught about making that great first impression. And yes, that's so very important. That old saying, 'you don't get a second chance to make a great first impression' is so true. Well, consider making a great last impression as well. Don't screw it up at the end of the call. Let the caller know, "It was nice to meet you by phone" or "thank you for calling" or "we appreciate your call." Something that will make that lasting positive impression, because when they hang up, they think to themselves either:

Wow that was a great call. Or man, I'll never call there again. How do you want your callers to remember you?

These are 5 great, simple, basic skills for you

At this point I think that any person that joins a free social network is probably aware that nothing is really free. Even though no money changes hands, when you sign up for a social network account a transaction is initiated.

Your personal data in exchange for access to the network. If the social network provides an understanding of how your data is used, and provides clear instructions for using privacy and opt-out features there is little to object to.

You want free services, both parties agree on a payment method and the transaction is completed.

The folks at naked security sum it up this way:

You're really agreeing to sell those organisations the right to accumulate, index, commercialize, and in some cases sell on to third parties, information about who you are, what you do, when you do it, and how you choose to talk about it online. You get to populate the databases from which they make revenue; in return you get to use the service.

In that sense, you aren't so much a user or a customer of most "free" sites. You're really just an informal employee, paid in kind. That's worth remembering.

The level of transparency as to how and when your data is used has been in constant evolution since the Internet was born, but clear examples from recent history include the legal challenges faced by Google and Facebook as they continue to grow. To date, LinkedIn has not met the same strenuous legal challenges as their competitors and this is surprising since they appear to walking down the same path as Facebook and Google.

Facebook had a variety of confusing privacy settings and they have simplified them and made efforts to provide clear explanations about how data is shared on the network. Google has several social media platforms and a while back they consolidated privacy policies and user privacy setting.

Some people objected to this, claiming it actually compromised privacy but if we accept Google's explanation at face value, it seems they are trying to eliminate confusion resulting from different settings on different networks.

I can't really say that Facebook or Google are model citizens when it comes to your privacy, but they do make the relationship clear and offer options that allow you to reduce your exposure and opt-out of certain features. By leaving optional fields like employment and address blank, combined with prudent choices about what you share as comments and posts you can exercise a good bit of control over your exposure.

By comparison, LinkedIn seems stuck in the 90′s with a convoluted system of member privacy settings that offer little documentation to help members understand how to use them properly. You can get an idea of how LinkedIn prioritizes member privacy by looking at where it is placed in the navigation menu. Both Facebook and Google+ have "Privacy" or "Privacy Settings" prominently displayed in the first level of menu selections. On LinkedIn, you must click settings, before you can see Privacy Controls by selecting the Profile tab. This may seem trivial but to me the design of the menu indicates priority, and privacy gets no mention up front.

LinkedIn recently launched a Safety Center. The Safety Center offers advice on external threats like phishing and malware but does not have a section that offers advice on personal security and privacy settings for member accounts.

The section on Identity Protection discusses external threats like email but provides no information about how to protect your identity on LinkedIn or how to manage your privacy settings. If you are trying to find the new Safety Center, you would have to navigate to the Help Center first (under "More"), then you see a link to the Safety Center.

Let's compare LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook to determine which networks provide the most useful information on managing privacy settings.

• Google+ : Know your Google security and privacy tools.
• Facebook: Privacy - Get the information you need to control your sharing on Facebook.
• LinkedIn: Privacy Policy (revised May 13, 2013)

LinkedIn does have a Privacy Policy, but it's more of a PR/Legal document and it includes some statements that do not appear to be accurate based on how the site actually functions. 

Facebook and Google take a beating on privacy issues and they have certainly earned it. Not many people would think of LinkedIn the same way but that's not because LinkedIn has better privacy. It's because LinkedIn just ignores member complaints about stalking, harassment and privacy. They don't talk about it, they don't address it. LinkedIn seems reluctant to tackle any issue that might not reflect well on the LinkedIn brand.

LinkedIn has a tiered privacy system that restricts data visible to members that are not connections, but there are different levels within your "personal network" where your data may be revealed to persons even if they aren't a direct connection. I've never found any documentation that offers a comprehensive breakdown that explains this and it's clear that LinkedIn members find this system confusing.

The Help Center has a page titled "Your Network and Degrees of Connection" but that page does not explain which member activities or profile details are revealed to the different levels. Remember that, depending on your settings you may also be broadcasting changes to your job title, employment, groups you have joined, new connections, etc.

Harassment and Stalking

That issue pales in comparison to serious issues like harassment and stalking. LinkedIn claims to be "world's largest professional network" and the intricate connection system gives members the impression that it's a safe environment. Many people treat LinkedIn like an electronic resume and provide details they would never consider adding to their Facebook page or Google profile. Some members subscribe to paid premium accounts with the presumption this provides better access to customer service.

You would think that LinkedIn would respond quickly to any reports of harassment or stalking and that they would provide members with the tools needed to protect themselves. That is not the case. If you are being harassed or stalked on LinkedIn you have little recourse. In fact, there are no blocking mechanisms available to LinkedIn members at all. Even if you create a support ticket to report harassment you will be told by customer service that they can not block another member from contacting you or viewing your profile.

Here's a response from LinkedIn Customer Service regarding a recent experience of my own:

Unfortunately, you can't block a specific group member from messaging you. You can prevent all group members from sending you messages through the group from the "Your Settings" option in the group's More tab. If you do not share a group and are not connected, they can't contact you, except through InMail or Open Messaging.

In my case, communication was initiated through a LinkedIn group and if you reviewed the page titled: "Your Network and Degrees of Connection" you see that LinkedIn says that fellow group members are considered part of your network. Ok, not a problem I guess if a group member becomes abusive or a stalker joins a group to harass me I can just leave the group and break contact, right? Actually no. Here's another excerpt from the same customer service inquiry.

I'm sorry for the frustration this is causing. If the line of communication was opened while sharing a group, the communication may continue.

Other major social networks have a blocking mechanism, LinkedIn doesn't. Even an appeal to customer service is futile, they basically just put their hands up and say sorry we can't do anything about it. My experience with this issue is minor compared to women who are victims of stalking and harassment that are trying to use LinkedIn professionally, yet find they are completely exposed by the lack of protection LinkedIn offers.

One member points out that the only solution presently available is for her to increase her profile privacy settings to such a degree that it becomes pointless to even have a LinkedIn membership:

I notice many complaints from Women who are often harassed on sites such as this. It is a real issue that should be addressed. Women should not have to worry about someone stalking her without jeopardizing her professional profile. Women in this situation may have to set her privacy so high that it negates the point of this site. Blocking one person would solve that problem. Please reconsider.

As she points out, in many cases the victims know who is stalking them and just want the ability to block a specific member account from viewing their profile or contacting them.

Another member makes this observation:

This is a negligent practice that LinkedIn is conducting. Stalkers have access to your current employer which can give them all kinds of information such as addresses and telephone numbers. I would suggest that LinkedIn make this change. I believe not having this function available is irresponsible on LinkedIn behalf by not recognizing the seriousness of this issue and contributing to possible criminal activities.

There are a number of discussions in the Help Forum that bring up this issue and the complaints aren't just from women who are victims of stalking and harassment. One gentleman offers these thoughts:

LinkedIn is lacking some key privacy features, which is one reason I hardly use this site, and rarely recommend others. Members should easily be able to block messages from any individual member, and also should block profiles from any individual member.

Connection Privacy

One of the features that sets LinkedIn apart from other networks is the amount of control you have over who you connect with and who can connect with you. LinkedIn puts up a number of hurdles to potential contacts, and if you have ever tried to connect with someone you have had to prove to LinkedIn that you know that person. Every time we try to connect with someone, LinkedIn gently reminds us:

Important: Only invite people you know well and who know you.

LinkedIn: Invite to connect

LinkedIn subverts their own system when they present you with "People you may know". You've probably seen this pop up after you accept a connection invite and this screen presents you with the option to send a connection invite to any member displayed through a single mouse click.

This is one method that a complete stranger can use to send you a connection invitation.

Think about that for a minute... you could actually know someone and if you initiate the connection invite, LinkedIn will ask you to prove that you know them. On the other hand, if LinkedIn thinks you may know someone, you can bypass all the useless formalities. I have no idea who most of the people are that are presented during these opportunities, many seem to have no common interest, shared group or demographic. So much for privacy through exclusivity. During these moments, LinkedIn also seems to toss their own advice out the window... "Only invite people you know well and who know you."

Some people have learned the hard way that using LinkedIn to manage contacts is a very bad idea. Here are a few recent examples from the Help Forum:

• Inbox showing invites I never sent.
• STOP AUTO INVITES
• How do I stop Linkedin sending out invitation email to my gmail contacts?

It seems there are a few issues going on in these discussions and some may be cases where individuals authorized LinkedIn to import contacts and failed to notice an option to send invitations to contacts that aren't on LinkedIn. If you examine the comments closely you will see that many members claim that is not what happened to them.

Linkedin is sending invitations out & accepting invitations on my account to / from people I have never heard of or had any contact with. This is absolutely unacceptable, must be corrected, apologized for, and corrected expediently!

When this happens, LinkedIn will send an invitation to join LinkedIn and two reminder emails.

I have more than 1500 contacts and all my contacts are receiving LinkedIn invites on my behalf, i have received complaints from many of my contact who very pretty upset with this recurrent reminders.

Your business associates and friends that do not have LinkedIn accounts may forgive you for sending a single invitation by accident. We all mess up and they may have done the same thing themselves. I did something similar a while back when I was working on organizing my contacts in Google+ and I sent about 200 people invites to join that network.

The problem is that LinkedIn sends an invitation and two reminders. Your contacts will consider that spam, and they are going to blame you.

This is a blog post about privacy, and you are probably wondering how this invitation issue/glitch pertains to that, right? Well consider the previous information about victims of harassment and stalking as you read this member comment in the discussion titled: "STOP AUTO INVITES"

I have gone on this site because the same thing has just happened to me. Only I didn't realise it had happened until many hours later and now one of the invites I have unwittingly sent has gone to an identity thief whose email address was unbeknown to me still in my hotmail account from 5 years ago. I am terrified that this man, having had access to all my links for most of a day (bearing in mind he accepted of course, no doubt immediately) will do something dreadful to me again. I have to find a way of knowing whether he has sent connection requests to my contacts, if all else fails I will have to close my account too.

Note that you might have contacts in your email address book that you didn't add personally. Depending on settings, addresses could be added to contacts if you reply to them or take other action.  Depending on the option you choose, the LinkedIn import connections function may pull contacts from an online webmail account instead of your local email client. Review listed contacts and purge any un-wanted contacts before you use this feature. Example: You may have deleted your ex-boyfriend's email address from Outlook, but he could still be in your contacts online in your Gmail account. If you import those contacts and send him an invitation to join LinkedIn - he may think it's "on" again.

Is this a user error, software glitch, or an intentional breach of trust to exploit member contacts to bring more members to LinkedIn? Before any accusations are leveled at LinkedIn we should review their response to the issue.

There is no response, they appear to be ignoring this issue completely.

I reviewed every page of the discussions linked to above and I could not find one comment by a LinkedIn Help Forum moderator. The Help Forum is a replacement to the Answers forum and for the most part its members helping members so there is no requirement for a moderator to address any issue. Moderators participate in some discussions, offering a link or talking about upcoming features. Sometimes they offer advice or correct mis-information provided by other members. I just want to point out that their assistance is conspicuously absent from these discussions.

Many members have indicated they submitted a support ticket for this issue, and when they could not get a decent answer to their request for help from Customer Service, they joined the member discussion in the Help Forum. You would think that with this many unhappy members LinkedIn would move quickly to resolve the issue and provide clear instructions on managing connection invites.

There is some hope for individuals that authorized LinkedIn to connect to their Gmail account and have caught this issue early on - you can revoke LinkedIn's connection to your Gmail account. Follow these steps to revoke access:

1. Log into your Gmail/Google account and select Privacy
2. Under "Connected applications and sites" click "Manage access"
3. Under "Authorized Access to your Google Account" find LinkedIn and click "Revoke Access"
4. Here's the direct link.

Breaking the connection with LinkedIn will stop the second and third round of invites from being sent out if you catch it soon enough. The first round of invites will already be in the email in-boxes of your contacts.

Members can withdraw connection requests but this must be done for each invitation. Members who sent hundreds of requests can submit a support ticket and ask LinkedIn to withdraw the requests but one seasoned member notes that:

If you opt to let LinkedIn Customer Service do the "withdraw" process, bear in mind it now takes LinkedIn Customer Service staffers at least 7-10 days to get to and process any service ticket, and all service tickets are handled on a strict FIFO basis regardless of where the service ticket originates. In the meantime LinkedIn will continue to send out reminders, which are sure to prompt even more recipients to click on the "I Don't Know" option, and that will make it even more likely LinkedIn will restrict your account.

Another serious issue hinted at in that member's comment is that LinkedIn only allows members a lifetime quota of 3,000 invites. To add insult to injury, current LinkedIn members that receive automatically generated invites can select "I don't know this person" as a reply to your invite. The number of "IDK's" you receive is used by LinkedIn as a flag that marks you as a "connection spammer". This is one of the types of spam addressed in the Safety Center.

Privacy in Members Only Groups

There are two types of groups on LinkedIn: Members-Only and Open Groups and LinkedIn states that in members only groups: "Discussions are visible to group members only."

I'll get back to that in a second, first a quick review. We know that when you join a group, other group members are considered part of your network. Discussions you start in open groups can be viewed by anyone on the Internet and can be indexed by search engines. If you're worried about privacy, you should already be well aware of the fact that anything you say in a discussion, comment, or status update on any social network is something that could end up being viewed by anyone. People get fired for the stupid stuff they say on Facebook and Twitter.

If you join a members-only group (sometimes referred to as a closed group) on LinkedIn, you might feel that you have an additional layer of privacy because LinkedIn states that: "Discussions are visible to group members only."

That's not really true because:

• Anyone that is a member of the group, including competitors, your boss, jealous spouse, etc. can just copy/paste your comments to the group. They can also print entire discussions to a PDF file or use their browser print function. You should already know this but some people forget this and LinkedIn doesn't go to any effort to point this out in their information about groups in the Help Center or Safety Center.
• All groups produce an email digest. As a group member you can change you settings to turn off digest emails so that you don't receive them, but they are still available to everyone else. The group owner has no control over this and there is no option in the group administration settings to switch off digests for an entire group. That means that the comment you made about how big an idiot your boss is can be forwarded to him via email in a couple of mouse clicks. It doesn't even matter if your boss isn't on LinkedIn, someone else can just forward the email digest. Maybe you don't talk trash about your boss. Good for you! Maybe you are a member of an industry group and you are discussing company procedures with your peers. Do you realize that your competitors may be listening in on that conversation?

You should be smart enough to think of these things and protect yourself, but I also think that LinkedIn could offer some practical privacy advice in their Safety Center. Why don't they? I don't think that's a priority for them, do you?

Bugs in LinkedIn Cause Privacy Issues

If you're one of the many people annoyed by the fact that other members can view your profile anonymously, here's a glitch that offers a bit of karmic payback to profile stalkers. LinkedIn has a lot of bugs and glitches and if you use the site on a daily basis you probably are no stranger to error messages and features that seem to break for a while then start working again. In the image above you can see that I've clicked the notification flag and it is displaying information on people who have recently viewed my profile. See John on the left? When I click on "Who's viewed your profile" his identity was hidden. It seems that John didn't want me to know he was checking out my profile, but a glitch in the notification system gave him away.

I haven't been able to get this glitch to repeat but I've seen similar issues when navigating the group administration menu. Individuals that had their profile pictures hidden, are revealed under certain circumstances when I review group discussions. Just remember, you might think nobody can see your profile photo, but that doesn't mean a bug in the LinkedIn website won't reveal it anyway.

Overview of LinkedIn Privacy Settings

LinkedIn privacy settings - profile

Most of the privacy settings can be accessed from the Profile tab after you click Settings from the main page. Something to note, you actually have two profiles on LinkedIn. One that LinkedIn members can view, and a public profile. Your public profile can be viewed by anyone on the Internet and may be indexed by search engines so pay close attention to your settings.

Under the Groups, Companies & Applications tab you can review the list of applications connected to your account. Remove any that you do not recognize or that you no longer use.

LinkedIn privacy settings - account

Additional settings are listed under the Account tab. Protect your account with a strong password!

LinkedIn privacy settings - https

Under the Account tab you will also find the setting to enable HTTPS access. If you access LinkedIn on a laptop over a wi-fi network you need to have this enabled. In fact, there really isn't any reason I can come up with to not have this enabled so just do it.

Groups - display icon

If you're worried about stalking or harassment you might also want to turn off group logos that are displayed on your profile. Remember that according to LinkedIn, fellow group members are considered part of your network so a stalker could just look at what groups you're a member of, then join them to send harassing messages to you.

Remember my experience with customer service? Once someone initiates contact through a group, you can't break that contact even if you leave the group. And... there is no block function so if you're worried about stalkers, hide your groups. You have to change that setting in each group you are a member of. The group logo is visible by default when you join a new group so remember to turn it off.

Wouldn't it be nice if all of those privacy settings were organized on a single page?

Wouldn't it be nice if the Safety Center explained how they work? Some settings offer no explanation of what they do or how they impact your privacy. Take a look at "Turn on/off data sharing with 3rd party applications" under the groups tab. What does that do? It sounds important doesn't it? Should I have to go digging around in the Help Forum or create a Customer Service ticket to ask what a profile setting does?

Thanks for reading through to the end. Your comments are welcome

The Customer Engagement Console (CEC) is a tablet based kiosk that businesses can utilize within retail locations, hotels, restaurants, waiting rooms, and other key points of customer traffic to capture feedback from consumers in the moment of the experience, and dually serve to market to those customers and engage in a real time, interactive manner.

This latest technological advancement provides a unique way for companies to collect feedback in the moment of experience, and more importantly, capture feedback and sentiment from those who do not make purchases.

With the recent decline in response rates for traditional feedback methodologies, including IVR and web-based surveys, the customer engagement console captures a more substantial segment of the customer population than ever before.

Understanding the non-purchasing customer and collecting data from this set has proven to be invaluable.

Our research indicates most IVR surveys garner a 2-4% response rate, whereas response rates utilizing the console can be tripled at a minimum.

The ability for companies to offer coupons and incentives gives them a unique, in the moment, opportunity for increased sales and loyalty with its customers.

The additional features of the engagement console, including marketing, loyalty card engagement, and social media integration further enhance the service, allowing for a robust multi-dimensional platform for consumer experience measurement.

Consumers are hungry for information, and this type of engagement console gives consumers the opportunity to self-educate with minimal staff assistance. With many companies forced to adhere to a minimalist approach to staffing, a customer engagement console is a wise choice.

We also launched mobile based customer engagement services to capture yet another customer segment. The mobile program incorporates feedback surveys, as well as other engagement opportunities.

Consumers can be engaged as part of a company's loyalty program, or engage in the moment of experience by scanning a QR code within the business location to partake in a survey, receive coupons, and offer feedback.

The immediacy of this service allows for rich information in a timely manner, boasting higher response rates and less incidence of memory erosion due to time passing between the experience and providing feedback.

These services are great opportunities for businesses to make the most impact with their customers in an efficient, cost effective manner.  Because of the advancement of mobile technology, consumers are interested in this 'in the moment' experience and want to engage with brands in a variety of ways.

Both services can help businesses increase incremental purchases and word of mouth marketing and advertising with the tie in to social media. The two service offerings can be utilized independent of each other or in tandem for the most significant data collection and engagement. The company's goal in the release of the newest services aligns with ensuring that clients' Customer Experience Index (CXi) remains statistically strong, as high levels equate to increased revenue.

Ann Michaels & Associates will be featuring the Customer Engagement Console and Mobile Services at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago May 18-21. The company will be located in the Technology.Pavilion, booth 6374.

So it's always interesting to hear a story about someone who failed to grasp this fairly simple concept -- and how they got caught doing it.  This time it was the Husains, longtime McDonald's franchisees, who lied to a court in Northern California in litigation against their franchisor.

The decision in Husain v. McDonald's Corp. was handed down by the California Court of Appeals on March 28, 2013.  The story goes something like this:

The Husains are longtime McDonald's franchisees, having owned up to five different McDonald's franchises located in northern California since the early 1980s.  In June 2005, the Husains entered into an agreement with a third party to purchase an additional 7 restaurants.  Of those, 3 of the franchise agreements were nearing the end of their 20-year franchise terms.  

As part of the purchase, the Husains asked McDonald's whether it would agree to provide them with new 20-year franchise agreements when the 3 expiring agreements came to the end of their respective terms. 

McDonald's offered to extend the Husains' expiring terms by letter, which offer had to be countersigned and agreed to by the Husains to become effective.  McDonald's claimed the offer was never accepted and expired on its own terms, leaving the Husains without renewal franchise agreements for the 3 expiring restaurants.  The Husains sued to enforce McDonald's alleged promise to them. McDonald's filed a cross-complaint to compel the Husains to relinquish the 3 restaurants to the company.

To "prove" that they had, indeed, accepted McDonald's offer to extend the expiring franchise terms, the Husains produced a certificate of mailing with a United States Postal Service postmark dated before the offer expired, alleging that the agreement had been properly accepted.  McDonald's countered by producing evidence that the post office that had supposedly provided the certificate of mailing was closed on the date bearing the postmark, and that the postmark stamp on the certificate was not in use until 2008.

Based on this evidence, McDonald's claimed that the Husains had committed perjury and fabricated evidence, and sought terminating sanctions -- in other words, McDonald's asked the Court to sanction the Husains by not permitting them to continue litigating their case. 

The trial court denied the motion, finding that at most McDonald's would be entitled only to dismissal of a cause of action the Husains had already dismissed, and that there was a factual dispute regarding the fabrication charges that could not be determined at the motion stage.

Renewed Motion for Terminating Sanctions

Four weeks into the trial and after the Husains had presented their case-in-chief, McDonald's filed a renewed motion for terminating sanctions. The motion was based on McDonald's contentions that Mr. Husain:

(1) presented falsified invoice information to overstate his investment in the franchise;

(2) falsified the certificate of mailing; and

(3) repeatedly mentioned his wife's recurring breast cancer in violation of a court order on a motion in limine on that subject. 

McDonald's argued that the sanctions were required under California Code of Civil Procedure Sec. 2023.030 and pursuant to the inherent power of the court.

The trial court found the Husains committed perjury, provided false evidence in discovery, and willfully and repeatedly violated its order on McDonald's motion in limine regarding the mention of Mrs. Husain's breast cancer. 

The court ordered terminating sanctions, finding that "[n]o lesser sanction would be appropriate or would ensure compliance and a fair trial." 

The court dismissed the Husains' complaint with prejudice, and struck their answer to McDonald's cross-complaint.  The court also dissolved the preliminary injunction in the Husains' favor and granted McDonald's an injunction preventing the Husains from continuing to occupy the restaurants and use its trademarks. 

The Husains appealed.

Appeal

The appellate court began by observing that "[b]ecause a terminating sanction is a drastic measure that denies a party the right to a trial on the merits, our courts have limited its use to only the rarest and most extreme cases of litigation misconduct when no lesser sanction can preserve the fairness of the trial and restore balance to the adversary system." 

The Court found the Husain's conduct reprehensible, but that it did not necessarily justify terminating sanctions.  

Examining the Husains' conduct, the appellate court reasoned that the discovery statutes relating to document production, depositions, and interrogatories do not authorize terminating sanctions unless a party refuses to obey a court order relating to that discovery. 

The court found that the Husains had not in fact disobeyed any discovery order by doctoring evidence, and that the end result of their tampering was "of little or no consequence to the litigation." Based on this, the court found that the discovery statutes did not authorize terminating sanctions.

The appellate court also found that the trial court's inherent powers did not justify terminating sanctions because McDonald's failed to show that "the Husains' misconduct deprived it of a fair adversary trial in any sense."  McDonald's, the appellate court reasoned, had the opportunity to effectively cross-examine Mr. Husain and place his credibility at doubt. 

In other words, McDonald's had the opportunity at trial to use Mr. Husain's actions against him. The court also found that Mr. Husain's violations of the trial court's orders on McDonald's motions in limine "could not have so impaired McDonald's ability to defend itself as to throw the fairness of the trial into question."  The court reasoned that some lesser sanctions would have fully protected McDonald's right to a fair trial.  

Because it found that terminating sanctions were not justified, the court of appeals set aside the terminating sanctions and ordered the trial court to schedule a new trial date -- in effect, permitting the Husains to continue litigating their case against McDonalds. 

Presumably, the serious issues of the franchisees' credibility, along with any lesser sanctions the trial court enters due to their perjury, will be a significant enough consequence to them to ensure that they are not able to benefit from their fraud on the court.

Part of this is that the quality of the concept being sold has been marginal and worse almost all the time. Whole business segments are now populated junk offerings.

Along these lines one might mention sandwiches, ice cream yogurt and gelato shops, pizza, printing, car repair and maintenance and dozens more. For various reasons - a long list - these are not real business investment opportunities and only fools buy them. Since the market does not provide protection for fools, I am not going to waste any more time talking about what they are and how they are sold. Rather, I would prefer to discuss how one should sell a real, investment worthy franchise opportunity.

In a real investment opportunity you have demonstrable revenue credibility.

The franchisor, before embarking upon a franchising program, had a real business that made decent profits and showed substantial growth and could be operated by trained and monitored managers in several replications of the franchise model. This kind of franchisor paid attention to what was happening in his market and made adjustments and improvements as soon as the opportunities presented themselves, keeping the operating manual current and paying attention to detail. It is a fine tuned, well managed business at the moment that the decision is made to franchise it.

In other words, it is a real business with an identifiable attainable breakeven point that will occur within a year in the right market.

The franchise's financial performance is sufficiently monitored both in company store mode and in the franchised mode, and differences in financial performance are accounted for in terms of what causes the differences. The franchisor knows his franchise and is not just some circus clown with a glib sales pitch chock a block with slogans and meaningless pseudo information.

A real franchise is not sold to every bozo with a temperature and a room temperature IQ who can write a check for the initial fee. A real franchise is not sold in any market where its anticipated performance is not responsibly projectable.

A real franchise skims the best markets first. In that manner the franchise itself, as a system, achieves early revenue credibility that enables the franchisor to begin writing a more aggressive FDD.

A real franchise is sold to carefully vetted franchisee prospects with more than enough money than will be needed and a proven business track record that includes actually having to make serious business risk decisions, not some marginal mid level "executive" who had to remortgage his house to meet the anticipated total initial investment.

Total initial investment, as presented in almost every FDD is an inadequate range of numbers intended to speak to the first 90 days after store opening and omits far too much to be remotely reasonable. In our real franchise, the Item 7 information will be a much higher number because the caliber of investor sought will not be scared off by it.

The number will also change frequently because its underlying information is being monitored carefully. The franchisor will have a good grasp on where breakeven can be expected to occur and how long it takes to get there. This enables more aggressive FDD information that is not misleading. This is the kind of information a real investor wants to know about. This is what sells franchises to intelligent investors.

If area development deals are sold, they are sold to people who have a track record demonstrating the capability to meet a development schedule. That schedule will describe the art of the possible in an area with defined top level geographic areas and good demographics specifically measured for this franchise.

With this approach the FDD can and will become more aggressively informative each year. There will be few surprises and those easily manageable. The franchisor will be willing to make adjustments for these surprises so that they do not result in serious economic disruption and the rise of disputes. The franchisor's willingness and ability to make adjustments and accommodations where appropriate, no matter what the franchise agreement may say, will mark that franchisor as the affiliation of choice for the best operators. Good reputations grow almost as fast as bad ones, and one does not become known as a chump for using good sense.

In this kind of franchise there is no danger in demanding compliance with the agreement terms, because the business is not financially impaired by the range of possible additional charges that could be made by the piggish franchisor. Good business partners know that everyone in the deal has to make money and that only a pig tries to squeeze every last nickel and dime out of it.

However, the extraneous revenue stream temptation will always be there, and an enlightened franchisor is all too often succeeded by more opportunistic types. For this reason it is critically important that franchisees establish an effective independent franchisee association long before abuses occur. It is far easier and less expensive to prevent abuse than it is to stop abuse.

Usually franchisees assume the best and leave themselves open to abuse until it is too late. That is a terrible mistake.

Franchisor established franchisee advisory boards are no substitute for the franchisees having their own independent organization. The franchisees of Quiznos and Marble Slab Creamery and many others learned this lesson the hard way. They are now dropping like flies.

For several years the franchise world has been populated mainly by mediocrities and worse, all sold to moron FranWads who were usually corporate middle management types - glorified clerks. They accumulated close to a million dollars in many instances through hard work and frugality, only to lose it all and end up in bankruptcy.

It is time for a higher level of investment quality. There are plenty of investors for those opportunities who are financially and experientially qualified. Following the plan suggested here and elsewhere on www.FranchiseRemedies.com a solid and credible franchise investment environment can again be established. I will be very happy to help guide them through their early years into their growth phase to maturity.

You now have the option to include "mentions" in your status updates and discussions. Similar to tagging someone in Facebook, mentions will allow you to essentially "tag" other users you're connected with or companies. Say you've written an article featuring a company, highlighting a recent accomplishment. You can now share that news with your connections and tag the company so they will be notified of your update. 

This is a great tool to use for getting your connections more involved in your status updates, encouraging them to take part in discussions based on what you've posted. It also gives you another way to connect with fellow LinkedIn users - it's like saying, "Hey there! I'd like to share this with you because I think you'll like it", forming yet another communication channel within the site.

Below are some guidelines, which are really simple, from LinkedIn's site about using the mention feature: 

Using the Mentions feature is a way to get connections to view and contribute to your updates and comments. Companies can also be mentioned and will be linked to their LinkedIn Company Page from your update or comment. Mentions allow you to notify your connections or a company that you're talking about them in an update or comment.

1. Go to your homepage share box or click comment on someone else's update.
2. Type "@" and then begin typing a name in the box. You'll then see a list of potential people or companies you can mention.
3. Click a name you want from the list and continue typing your message.

Note: LinkedIn members outside your network can also be mentioned if they've commented on the same update.

After you select someone from the list and finish your update, that person will receive an email and an update letting him or her know you've mentioned them. The name will also be linked to a profile or Company Page from your update.

Have you used this new feature? If so, we'd love to hear about your experience with it and how you use it to enhance your connections. If you want to learn more, you can visit LinkedIn.

I don't ever remember being asked that particular question but here's my reply -"Customer service is a methodology that when put in motion, creates a customer's experience."  This definition is not specific to any particular industry nor does the size of the organization matter.

Now someone is probably wondering what I mean by methodology. When defining customer service as a methodology, I'm speaking of the systems that an organization chooses to put in place to provide a customer experience.

Ok, now someone may be asking "Errol, now what systems are you referring to? Allow me to explain.

When determining what your organization's customer service methodology will be, you are actually determining the experience your customer will receive when interacting with those within your organization. For instance, when your customer calls and your inbound call methodology dictates that persons answering calls will perform certain tasks while on the call and do so within a certain time frame, those requirements lead to the customer's experience.

When that person's performance review and salary increase is tied to their success in meeting the goals of that inbound call strategy, this too determines the customer's experience with your organization. If your strategy induces this person to be more concerned with meeting goals than taking the necessary steps and time for each customer's situation, this too creates an experience.

When creating core values for your organization, you are creating an experience for your customer. If words such as integrity, honesty, respect and valued are included in your core values, your customer should experience these words when interacting with your organization. Core values are the frame-work from which your customer service methodology is created. Every component of your strategy should be grounded in your core values.

When choosing your training methodology, once again you're creating an experience for your customer. Your customer is depending upon customer contact personnel to be experts on your products and services. Keep the customer's experience in mind when developing training programs. I suggest focusing on creating ambassadors for your organization.

Are customer contact personnel educated on your various products or services?

Have they actually utilized or experienced your products or services for themselves in order to gain the customer's perspective?

What tools will they need to provide a great customer experience?  

Be sure to equip them with basic soft skills training as one's ability to be pleasant and professional goes a long way in creating a positive customer experience.

When choosing who get's the opportunity to be the face of your organization through your hiring methodology, here again you're creating an experience for your customer. It's important to carefully establish your hiring criteria. What characteristics are critical for your customer contact personnel? Is industry experience more important than personality traits? Remember, you're attempting to create a great customer experience. Your hiring choices will bear fruit! Make sure it's good fruit!

When exercising your personnel management methodology, remember that this too creates an experience for your customer. Just as you must strive to make sound customer contact personnel hiring decisions, it's even more important to utilize sound management practices. Make sure managers have the proper tools required for this position - people skills, products and services knowledge, coaching skills, leadership skills and a good comprehensive understanding of the organization.

Should your customer contact personnel become frustrated with management practices, your customer will eventually be impacted. Employee turnover, discontent and low productivity all  create an experience for your customer. Manage employees in a way that will certainly lead to a great customer experience.

When developing complaint resolution methodology - you got it - you're creating an experience for your customer. We all know that sometimes mistakes are made or things get left undone.

When these errors happen, the need for a quick and thorough resolution is paramount. Is your methodology in this area customer friendly? 

Does every resolution require a supervisor/manager's approval or are your customer contact personnel equipped with options for a speedy resolution?

Are you tracking customer complaints for patterns and trends?

Doing so allows one to identify possible operational issues which once corrected will alleviate repeat complaints which in turn - you guessed it - creates a positive customer experience.

When choosing the methodology to get your customer's opinion regarding your products or services - one more time - you're creating an experience for your customer.

We all know the value in getting the customer's opinion. Most love the opportunity to let you know exactly what they think of your organization.

Make it easy for them to do so as the more customer feedback you receive, the more data you have to make decisions. Do you need to make adjustments to your product or services? Do your customer contact personnel need additional training? Provide regular feedback opportunities  in order to stay current on what's important to your customer.

 These various methodology components create an organizational customer service system which in turn creates customer experiences. Examine your methodologies to insure that they all are geared toward providing what's important to your customer. Now put them all in motion and create great customer experiences!

The department's lawsuit seeks to recover unpaid overtime compensation and liquidated damages for more than 800 current and former laborers. It also requests the court to permanently enjoin the defendants from committing future violations of the FLSA.

Employment agencies Universal Contracting and CSG Workforce Partners provided laborers to contractors--Decorative Enterprises and Mountain Builders--and charged the laborers and contractors a fee for their employment placement services. Wage and Hour Division investigators found that the companies misclassified workers as something other than employees, claiming there was no employee-employer relationship, and denied the employees overtime compensation, as required by the FLSA.

"Universal Contracting, CSG Workforce Partners and their clients are intentionally skirting the law by willfully and wrongfully claiming that their workers are not employees because they are members or owners in a limited liability company," said Cynthia Watson, Wage and Hour Division southwest regional administrator. "As demonstrated by this lawsuit, the department is vigorously pursuing corrective action in those situations where misclassified workers are actually employees, to ensure that they are paid required wages and to level the playing field for employers who play by the rules."

The department's suit was filed in the Central District of Utah, Salt Lake City, following investigations by the Wage and Hour Division's Salt Lake City Office that found the defendants violated the FLSA by failing to maintain a record of hours worked by employees and failed to pay the employees the federally mandated overtime compensation, as required by the FLSA.

The violations committed by Universal Contracting and CSG Workforce Partners are considered willful because the companies had been notified previously by the Wage Hour Division that the workers are employees. As such, they are entitled to the wages and employment protections guaranteed by the FLSA. Universal Contracting and CSG Workforce Partners willfully and purposefully pursued an operational method that makes it difficult to determine the hours its laborers worked and the corresponding compensation received for those hours.

The department's lawsuit seeks to hold Universal Contracting and CSG Workforce Partner's clients, Mountain Builders and Decorative Enterprises, severally liable for the violations. Mountain Builders and Decorative Enterprises are in a joint employment relationship with Universal Contracting and CSG Workforce Partners. The department has also filed a motion for preliminary injunction seeking an order directing Universal Contracting and CSG Workforce Partners to immediately comply with the FLSA's overtime and recordkeeping provisions.

The misclassification of employees as something other than employees, such as independent contractors, presents a serious problem for affected employees, employers and to the economy. Misclassified employees are often denied access to critical benefits and protections, such as family and medical leave, overtime, minimum wage and unemployment insurance, to which they are entitled. Employee misclassification also generates substantial losses to the Treasury and the Social Security and Medicare funds, as well as to state unemployment insurance and workers' compensation funds.

The Wage and Hour Division's Salt Lake City Office and the Denver branch of the Office of the Solicitor, through an agency memorandum of understanding with the Utah Labor Commission, have been working on employee misclassification issues, including issues regarding this case, with the Commission, the Utah Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing and the Utah Industrial Accidents Division. Under the terms of a similar information-sharing memorandum of understanding, this is the type of case that the Labor Department may refer to the Internal Revenue Service.

Memorandums of understanding with state government agencies arose as part of the department's Misclassification Initiative, with the goal of preventing, detecting and remedying employee misclassification. More information is available on the department's misclassification Web page at http://www.dol.gov/misclassification.

The FLSA requires that covered, nonexempt employees be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for all hours worked, plus time and one-half their regular rates, including commissions, bonuses and incentive pay, for hours worked beyond 40 per week. Additionally, employers must maintain accurate time and payroll records. Employers who violate the law are, as a general rule, liable to employees for their back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages. Back wages and liquidated damages are paid directly to the affected employees.

For more information about federal wage laws, call the Wage and Hour Division's toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243) or its Salt Lake City office at 801-524-5706. Information also is available at http://www.dol.gov/whd.

In this industry, the stakes are higher - it is difficult to lose customers, but when those customers are large corporations, the impact of such a loss of greater significance.

In the B2C sector, consumers' purchases are driven by price along with good customer service. However, in the B2B sector, the relationship between company and vendor plays a more important role than solely price. For that reason, it is important to measure service levels and objectively evaluate service levels within a company.

Many companies wonder exactly how B2B mystery shopping works. Quite simply, it works in the same manner as more traditionally thought of mystery shopping, with the one exception being that customers, or mystery shoppers, will pose as companies who are calling to inquire about your services and products.

4 Great Benefits of B2B mystery shopping

With B2B mystery shopping, you can evaluate the following aspects of your business:

1.  General customer service levels & product fulfillment- by setting up fictitious accounts or companies, our trained mystery shoppers can contact your business via telephone or email to make inquiries about your products/services.

By doing this, you will gain a better understanding of how your potential customers are treated, the information that is shared with prospective customers, and what follow up, if any, is completed in order to attain a new client.

Furthermore, fictitious accounts and companies can be created to pose as current customers to evaluate the service ordering process. From here, you can see if your employees are attempting to upsell/cross sell, offering additional products/services that are important to your customers, and the general service levels provided.

2.  Branding presence - through mystery shopping, you will determine how your branding is portrayed to other companies. This is important in gaining customer loyalty and longevity.

Studies have shown that strong branding will encourage customers to be loyal to the product, be less likely to seek out competing brands, and not be adverse to pricing increases.

3.  Online interactions/email inquiries - with the shift in online technology, more and more companies will seek information through email inquiries versus picking up a phone. One company utilized a mystery shopping program in which shoppers posed as companies who were seeking services and wanted to find out more information.

They wanted to see how long it took for emails to be answered, if the answers were fully provided, and if any type of follow up was conducted.

4.  Training and sales development - it is vital that the sales team presents information in a clear, engaging manner, builds rapport with potential clients, and conducts the sales calls in a manner in which sales can be generated. If sales are not where they are expected to be, it is difficult to determine if it is because of the lack of sales development within the company or if there is a flaw in the sales techniques used.

Mystery shopping programs can provide companies with a program that will help them determine which areas are lacking, make improvements, and even determine if sales training needs to be altered.

While the planning stages of starting a B2B program are more detailed in nature, the program can run simply and easily once initiated. With this type of mystery shopping, the client plays a crucial role in the development of scenarios to play out as well as the implementation of fictitious company names/accounts.

Depending on the nature of the industry, this may require setting up accounts in the company's system that are covertly flagged to indicate they are not true accounts. In other cases, it may only require companies assisting the mystery shopping provider in determining which types of companies mystery shoppers should represent in order to interact with staff in an authentic, relevant manner.

Two Easy Examples of B2B mystery shopping

1.  A supplier of office supplies and materials wanted to determine how special request orders were fulfilled and what options were provided to businesses who contacted them. They contracted the services of Ann Michaels & Associates to find out.

Furthermore, they wanted to find out if upselling and cross selling was initiated during the order process, and what promotional materials, if any, were included in the customer's packaging.

We used mystery shoppers who were small business owners in an industry that would need such supplies in a reselling capacity. Using their business information, they contacted the client's locations to place a specific order with special requirements. They evaluated the order placing process, tracked time for delivery, and then reported on how the order was packaged, what promotional material was included with the order. Pictures were taken and uploaded onto the survey.

2.  A plastics and materials testing laboratory conducted baseline evaluations to determine speed of email response, knowledge of testing and laboratory capabilities, and follow up attempts with potential customers. Additionally, they wanted to see firsthand how email inquiries were routed within the company, and if responses weren't provided, at which point in the routing system the emails "fell through the cracks." 

They contracted us to conduct a baseline study, repeating the same study three months later and after training was completed to evaluate effectiveness of training procedures.

Mystery shoppers were trained and educated on the company's laboratory testing capabilities and the industries. Each mystery shopper was assigned a fictitious company name and position within the company. They were instructed to contact an assigned location via email asking about testing specifications and what information was required for certain tests to be conducted.

Mystery shoppers tracked the time to respond to email inquiries, as well as who the original email was sent to and who replied (if it was a different person than who the email was sent to).

Additionally, the knowledge of testing capabilities and referral sources were evaluated, and mystery shoppers documented whether or not the associate attempted to follow up on the initial inquiry or if actual follow up attempts were made within 2 business days of the initial inquiry.