Spas are well-known for pampering their clients - and charging a premium for their services. Despite the high prices that come with massages, scrubs, and treatments, the world's leading spas have been able to turn a tidy profit by focusing on delivering exceptional customer service.

Here's what your business can learn from these high-end service-orientated enterprises:

Focus On Personalized Service
The hallmark of any great spa is their attention to personal detail - they make a point of knowing each customer by name, and learning as much as they can about their clients' personal likes, dislikes, and preferences.

Simple things like remembering how they like their coffee, the names of their kids and pets, and even what times they like to book appointments go a long way towards creating loyal customers.

Pay Attention To Details
Another technique that leading spas use is continual customer engagement - making their clients feel special, even when they're not getting a pedicure, manicure, or hot stone massage.

Spas do this by sending out personalized, hand-written birthday cards and holiday notes with messages targeted to each one of their clients. This reminds their clients of that pampered feeling their customers get at their spa, helping to keep a personal connection alive.

Create A Loyalty Program
The owners at Willow Spa in Santo Monica, California knew that they needed to up their game when it came to pampering their clients - after all, the spa business is highly competitive on the West Coast.

In order to encourage their clients to return to their spa, the owners created a points-based loyalty program that provided incentives to encourage both repeat visits and the use of some of the spas' less popular treatments.

While their initial program needed some adjustments, overall the owners report that their loyalty program is a success. According to co-owner Coco Iv, "We've been able to gain and retain repeat clients with no additional work put into the process".
 
 
Say Thank You
Ask any successful spa owner what the single most effective thing is that they do to retain customers and chances are good they'll mention thank you notes - simple, old-fashioned, hand-written notes or cards that make clients feel appreciated.

In fact, the idea of sending a hand-written note as part of an overall relationship management strategy isn't unique to spas - many big-name companies like Land's End have also embraced the idea of mailing out personalized cards as a way to thank their clients and create a positive, lasting impression.

The average American spends over 90,000 hours at work , or more than 10 years over the course of their lifetime, which can be seen as either a blessing or a jail sentence, depending on your perspective.

Whether you love your job or dread it could be a matter of science - neuroscience that is.

Can You 'Choose Happiness'? Scott Crabtree Thinks So
Scott Crabtree has dedicated his entire 25-year career helping employees from small start-ups, mid-size companies, and even big multi-national organizations like Microsoft, Nike, and Boeing achieve happiness at work through science-based techniques.

It should come as no surprise that the founder and Chief Happiness Officer (or CHO for short) of a company called "Happy Brain Science" believes there's a solid connection between neuroscience and job satisfaction. Crabtree holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Vassar College, and he balances his time between public speaking engagements, data analysis, and corporate training.

According to Crabtree, happiness is by and large a choice - one that begins with gratitude. He points out that science shows that the common belief that hard work leads to happiness is flawed - in fact, the key to success is to be happy with your current status, since happiness frees up critical space in the brain that's needed to achieve results.

Increasing Productivity Through Brain Science
Crabtree asserts that happier people are more productive, healthier, and even live longer - claims that have been confirmed by numerous scientific studies, including one from the University of Warwick that concluded happy worker were 12 percent more productive than their counterparts.

In addition to having a sunny disposition, Crabtree believes that happy workers are more creative, sociable, and intuitive - qualities that can be of real value in the average workplace. He claims that a key part of achieving happiness is to focus less on people and things that we don't enjoy, and spend time focusing on the positive.

He also emphasizes that happiness comes from being social, that "we need each other to be happy" - and we do that by "spreading happiness at work".

1. Check the “from” email: When you receive an email that looks like it’s from a person you know, always check the email address next to the name of the sender to verify that it’s correct. Email addresses can sometimes be spoofed, so to double check, click “reply” to see what email appears in the “To” field. Do not actually reply to the email.
2. Use your knowledge of the person: If you receive an email that looks like it’s from someone you know, check it carefully to see if it matches what you know about the person. Does the phrasing, tone, or language seem strange or uncharacteristic? Do they use a name, greeting, or sign-off other than the one you’re used to seeing? Do they have the right signature file or graphic at the end of the email?
3. Check for misspellings and awkward phrasing: In the iTunes email scam above, the phisher wanted to “advise the quantity and domination to procure.” Uh, you mean “denomination”? As the conversation continued, the scammer stopped using any sort of punctuation or sentence spacing, just long strings of run-together phrases. Of course there’s always a chance your colleague doesn’t know how to spell or write, but it’s still worth checking—phishing emails are notorious for being poorly written.
4. Be suspicious: The X-Files had it right: Trust no one. If you have the slightest suspicion about the origin of an email you receive, call the person independently to confirm that they sent it, and never do anything involving money, business operations, or revealing sensitive information without verifying, in person if possible, that the person who appears to be emailing you actually wants you to perform the requested task. So many spear phishing attacks could be foiled by simply popping your head into someone’s office and saying, “Hey, do you really want me to do this?”
5. Conduct security training: Cyber criminals are always looking for new ways to defraud people, and it can be difficult to keep track of all the warning signs you should be looking for. In addition, working in a busy office naturally makes people more susceptible to scams, because when you’re focused on trying to get things done, you tend to let down your guard. Companies like KnowBe4 and Cofense (formerly PhishMe) can hold security awareness training for your employees and can even set up automated fake phishing emails you can send to employees to increase their security awareness.
   

Here are a few real-life attacks we’ve seen recently, and how we knew they were phishing:
The attack: An employee in the payroll department received an email from “Mike,” another employee, saying he wanted to change his direct deposit information.

The giveaway: While the phishing email had the full name of the employee correct, the “from” email was wrong, and the person signed the email “Michael” when the actual employee only goes by “Mike.”


The attack: An employee received an email that appeared to be from his boss asking, “Are you available for a quick task?” We’ve seen these before, and because they do not ask for or refer to any sensitive or financial information, people tend to engage with the sender, which then leads to the scam.

The giveaway: When the email recipient responded, he received strangely worded instructions to obtain 10 $100 iTunes gift cards. The scammer asked the employee to scratch off the silver portion to reveal the PINs  and send a picture of all the codes. If the red flags weren’t up before, that sent them all the way up the pole. However, when the employee asked what client they were for, the scammer provided the name of an actual client of the company.