Duane Hicks
For a sixth year, the Rainy River Future Development Corp. is looking for participants for its customer service challenge—and interested businesses have until Friday, Feb. 20 to sign up.
RRFDC officer manager Cynde Milette said 35 district businesses signed up for the challenge last year, with organizers hoping to get at least that many this time around.
Milette noted 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.
She added 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, Milette said 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.
Milette hinted that since the program is in its sixth year, organizers are looking at ways to “keep it interesting” and so some details of the challenge may end up being a little different than in the past.
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.
