With the increase in the number of applicants for Secret Shopping Jobs, numerous Companies have come up to provide employment opportunities and resources to Secret Shoppers. These Companies provide information and assistance to people who want to enter or are already a part of the industry, and many of them have extended their service internationally.

Service Intelligence, Inc. (www.serviceintelligence.com) is one of the largest Secret Shopper Companies and forerunners of retail industry related to customer care evaluation. It has offices in the United States, Canada and partners around the world. The company’s website features self-assigning of choice shops and submission of reports online.

ServiceCheck (Servicecheck.com) offers Secret shopping services to a number of industries which include fast food, gas stations, convenience stores, restaurant (casual & fine dining), and general retail. In 2003, ServiceCheck had performed 300,000 audits since the company had started.

Founded in 1993, Sensors Quality Management Inc or SQM (www.sqm.ca) provides evaluations relating to issues of quality, service, cleanliness and value. It has employed Secret shoppers in about 18 countries around the World. SQM main clients include airlines, hotels, restaurants, retailers and banks.

Mystique Shopper (www.mystiqueshopper.com)’s client base includes national Restaurant Chains, Car Dealerships, Hotels, Jewelry Stores, Casinos, Retail Clothing, Cellular Wireless Providers and Specialty Chains.

Check Mark, Inc. (www.checkmarkinc.com) is a national organization located in Cincinnati, Ohio. It has clients in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico which include industries such as Banking, Retail, Restaurant, Entertainment and Leisure.

Established in 1984, Ellis Property Management Services (EPMS) (www.epmsonline.com) provides executive-level management and marketing consulting services to the multifamily industry. It also serves both the apartment owner/investor and the property management company.

Shop’n Chek International (www.shopnchek.com) has been providing Secret Shopper Services for over 34 years. It is known for using innovative technologies such as Interactive Voice Response Surveys, also known as IVR customer surveys which can appear as both web surveys and telephone surveys.

Secret Shoppers provides detailed information about secret shoppers, how to become a secret shopper, restaurant secret shoppers and more. Secret Shoppers is affiliated with Instant Win Sweepstakes.

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Have you pulled up to the gas pump lately and thought about how cheap gas is? If so,
that’s called conditioning. We’ve been conditioned over the last few months by the high
gas prices that $2 per gallon is cheap. I’m sure the oil companies hope it stays there, and
they’ve conditioned us to accept it.

Look inside your restaurant. Have you conditioned your customers to accept mediocre
food, service, or cook times? Are your employees conditioned knowing you accept the
lowest standards possible and they can come in late, out of uniform, and be unproductive?
It’s never too late to re-condition the team. It’s not so important where you are today, but
rather what you are doing about it.

Get a jump on New Year’s Resolutions and take the month of December to re-focus on
recipes, procedures, cook times, and cleanliness in the back of the house. Make a
commitment to uniform standards and attendance policies. Ask the staff for input on how
to make your restaurant a better place to work–perhaps being a better boss is a good place
to start. Out front, work on hospitality when greeting and thanking the customer vs.
putting them through a process. Get the team to suggestive sell and move those new gift
cards or gift certificates during the holidays.

For you personally, condition yourself to say more positive comments than negative ones
(4-to-1 is a good ratio), train something new each day, hold interactive pre-shift meetings,
role play with your staff, and have a contest-a-day to bring some fun back into the work
environment. Making your restaurant great starts with you. If you can’t or won’t re-condition yourself, the staff certainly won’t.

Remember, gas for $2 per gallon is not cheapwe’re just conditioned to believe it is.
Want your staff to be excellent? Condition them to believe that as well!

T.J. Schier is service professional, consultant and speaker with over 20 years experience in operations and training. Founder and president of Incentivize Solutions and podTraining, T.J. has helped numerous clients enhance their service and training programs and spoken to tens of thousands of managers, franchisees and operators in various fields. Visit http://IncentivizeSolutions.com/ for more info motivating today’s employees, training today’s generation and delivering outstanding guest service; or http://podTraining.us/, a unique new system and the foundation of ‘i-learning’ - using the device of today’s generation, the iPod - to train your workforce.

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There are many ways to reduce heartburn frequency. There are some pretty safe foods for heartburn sufferers. However, it may be necessary to evaluate your lifestyle and overall health in order to prevent the frequency of heartburn. Sometimes it is necessary to keep a food diary or at least a mental note of what foods you ate before you experienced the heartburn symptoms. Most people experience heartburn occasionally. It is next to impossible to avoid everything that can cause heartburn all the time, but there are ways to reduce heartburn or at least the likelihood of experiencing heartburn symptoms.

Some ways to reduce heartburn include dietary changes. If your diet is high in fat and acidic foods like tomatoes and citrus fruits, reducing this and including more safe foods for heartburn sufferers may reduce the frequency of your heartburn. Experts may not always agree on what are safe foods for heartburn sufferers, but most agree that they are foods that are low in fat and low in acid. For instance, apples, bananas and pears are better choices than oranges. Baked, grilled or boiled skinless, white meat chicken and baked, boiled or broiled seafood are better choices than hamburgers and fried chicken. It is a sensible diet that you are looking for, not just a list of safe foods for heartburn sufferers.

Most treatment plans or recommended ways to reduce heartburn include lifestyle changes along with dietary changes. For example, eating several small meals every couple of hours is better than eating one or two large meals. Even if you only eat supposed safe foods for heartburn sufferers, but you overeat, you may experience heartburn. If you are overweight, eating smaller meals more frequently may help you lose weight by increasing your metabolism and maintaining proper blood glucose levels. People who are overweight suffer from heartburn more frequently than people who are at their ideal weight, so losing weight may be one of the ways to reduce heartburn.

If you experience heartburn at night, one of the ways to reduce heartburn is to eat your last meal three to four hours before going to bed. Elevating the head of your bed or sleeping on a specially designed wedge are other possible ways to reduce heartburn that is experienced at night. Overweight people are more likely to experience heartburn at night, it may interfere with their sleep or they may be unaware of it. Nighttime heartburn can lead to respiratory problems, as the acid can be inhaled. If you are eating small meals, trying to lose weight and including mostly safe foods for heartburn sufferers in your diet, but you know or believe that you are suffering from nighttime heartburn, it is advisable to see your doctor, before the problem becomes worse.

All of the above recommendations for ways to reduce heartburn assume that a person is in otherwise good health. Heartburn can be a symptom of more serious medical conditions including acid reflux and hiatal hernia. Treatment plans still generally include the above mentioned lifestyle changes and eating more safe foods for heartburn sufferers, but other medications may be recommended.

For more information about heartburn, visit www.digestive-disorders-guide.com.

Patsy Hamilton writes informational articles for the Digestive Disorders Guide. Visit us at http://www.digestive-disorders-guide.com

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