Open Book Management was a brand-new concept to me just four months ago. I hopped on the ZingTrain in October 2018 as the next-generation ZingTrain Concierge, a position responsible for coordinating ZingTrain’s on-site seminars and workshops here in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In addition to that, I report on, forecast and track ZingTrain’s public sales numbers […]
How do you welcome new hires into your organization? Do you hand them a uniform and point them in the general direction of the front counter? Do you have them attend several days of classroom training before they ever talk to a customer? Do they learn about your organization’s history and vision from someone in leadership? Or […]
Back in 2007, when Zingerman’s wrote Zingerman’s 2020 Vision describing what the business would look like in the year 2020, we wrote that “we [Zingerman’s] have successfully quantified fun, measured fun, and improved our fun factor by at least 380% since 2007. We actively teach people how to have fun at work. We have games […]
We all know service is important—right? We’d be surprised if there were a company left in the US which hasn’t incorporated some version of “the customer is always right” into its employee handbook. Every politician and business leader can quote statistics about the pros and cons of the relentless move towards a “service economy.” And […]
What does a truly great customer experience look like? We spend a lot of time thinking about this at Zingerman’s. In fact, we actively measure the customer experience by way of the Zingerman’s Experience Indicator (ZXI), which is our adaptation of the more commonly known Net Promoter Score. As Ari explains in this article, “the […]
When the holiday season rolls around, most of us have the ‘Busy Dial’ turned up to 10, or even 20 on some days.
For those of us who sell specialty products, customer education has always been part of the selling process. Sometimes we’re offering products that most customers have never heard of. Other times we have items with familiar names but vastly superior ingredients or construction. Almost always the prices that we charge are higher than what is […]
We’re big believers in visioning at Zingerman’s. We’ve seen firsthand how it can improve our organization and the personal lives of those who use the vision process.
When business owners run into challenges that they’re not sure how to address—or know they can’t resolve on their own—they often start looking outside their organizations for expertise and resources. Two common places to look are consultants and trainers.
“You can say ‘no’ to customers!” feels like an outrageous thing to advocate, especially when your organization is known for delivering great customer service…
Training is a big investment–a worthwhile one (!) but can be accompanied by a price tag that makes some folks nervous.
As far as ways to approach your business’ finances, Open Book Management has a lot going for it – the numbers! The transparency! The shared sense of ownership! The accountability!
