Duane Hicks
Area businesses have until next Friday (Feb. 20) to sign up for the Rainy River Future Development Corp.’s sixth-annual customer service challenge, but organizers are seeing an excellent response to the program so far.
“We have 18 already, so that’s pretty good. And we have new people, people who have never signed up before, so that’s good,” said RRFDC officer manager Cynde Milette, adding a fax and e-mail campaign, coupled with an article in the Daily Bulletin at the end of January, immediately sparked interest in the challenge.
A total of 35 district businesses signed up for the challenge last year, with organizers hoping to get at least that many this time around.
At the current rate, this just might happen, Milette noted.
“We might be overwhelmed,” she chuckled.
Any business within the RRFDC’s catchment area (from Mine Centre west to Rainy River, and north to Morson and Nestor Falls) can get involved in the free program, whether they are a big or small business, and whether they’ve done it before or are first-timers.
There’s no upper limit to the number of participants. As long as they’re a district business, none will be turned away.
While a business itself has to register to participate, people who shop at a certain business and get good service should encourage that business to sign up for
the challenge.
Those businesses interested in signing up can contact the RRFDC at 274-3276. They then will receive an information package detailing the challenge.
After the Feb. 20 deadline, the participating businesses will be contacted by the RRFDC and then “mystery shopped” in March and April.
After the “mystery shopping” is complete, the RRFDC will tally up the results, review the comments, and then pick the top 10 from across the district, also noting honourable mentions.
The winners likely will be announced in May—possibly during a Chamber of Commerce mix-and-mingle as they were last year.
After the winners are announced, Milette said all the participants (regardless of how they do) will get access to their performance evaluations so they can find out where their strengths and weaknesses lie when it comes to serving
customers.
