» Best Mystery Shopping

The ingredients that you need for selecting the service offering best mystery shopping are not such a big mystery. The truth is that if you were to look at the best undercover shopping sites in the country, you will notice that they all have a few things in common. Understanding what these factors are can make it easier to research and find the right hidden shopping company to work with for your assignments.

Service Built On Trust

When looking for the best mystery shopping corporation for you, always bear in mind that they are dealing with very sensitive information. You will be making assessments on your employees, shops, or overall business strategies based on the data they give you. If the data is incomplete or incorrectly recorded, this could seriously affect the decisions you make. Apart from that, these data need to be treated confidentially. You need to be sure that your assignment and the data that is harvested are all treated with the utmost security and confidentiality.

This is why the best mystery shopping organization is often one that has a great deal of experience. The best services in the field today are the ones that have spent years building a good rapport with their clients. Many well established companies do not even advertise their services openly. In fact, a strong hidden mystery service will usually have a client list of people who have stayed with them for a number of years. This means that clients are not just satisfied with the results, but they trust the service to do a thorough and impartial job as well.

The Importance Of Experience

You will also find that the companies offering best mystery shopping also employ people who have professional training and have a good deal of experience as well. It is not uncommon to see many services today, especially online, advertise for freelance evaluators. The problem with this is that oftentimes, the service will not give the shoppers any extra training. That is, you simply have a person execute a shopping spree or have a meal at a restaurant and write up about their experience. Compare this to an evaluator who has practical and theoretical training not only are they able to keep a sharp eye on everything, but they will also know exactly how to record and report this data. At the end of the day, an assignment executed by a trained professional will be much different than the one done by an amateur.

The companies providing best mystery shopping will also be very versatile in their range of services and applications. For instance, they should be able to offer a wide range of assessments, ranging from employee evaluation to website analysis and even in store security. Apart from that, they should use a range of different methods ideally the service should employ useful traditional methods as well as cutting edge modern ones. For special assignments, they should be able to suggest the best methodology to choose. The service provider offering best mystery shopping should also be easy to work with. They should be ready and willing to answer any questions you have prior to and after the assignment is completed. You should be able to rely on them, especially if you plan on running assessments on a regular basis.

Taking the time to find the right undercover shopping service will pay you dividends in the end. Instead of opting for a service that can only offer you mediocre service, it is always a better idea to do a little digging and find one service provider that can give you the best hidden shopping service that you can find.

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Robin Turner, PhoneSmart call center manager, gives a great sales technique for the secret shopping business.
Welcome to the PhoneSmart secret shopping blog, an inside peek at the mystery shopping and secret shopping industry.

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Sarah Little, PhoneSmart’s Sepcialist in Mystery Shopping and Evaluations offers the following insight on lunch.

Welcome to the PhoneSmart secret shopping blog, an inside peek at mystery and secret shopping.

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Our PhoneSmart call center operator, Mary knows how to greet people.

Welcome to the PhoneSmart secret shopping blog, an inside peek at the mystery shopping and secret shopping industry.

People get an impression of you within the first 20 seconds of meeting you. After the initial contact the impression can get better or can get worse. When meeting in person, notice is given to clothing, shoes, personal hygiene, expressions, body language, and quality of the conversation. If you are in a professional setting, then people expect you look and act with professionalism. If you are in a casual setting, then people expect you to be casual. For example, you would not usually see a farmer on his tractor in a business suit, or the President in a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt at an inaugural ceremony. Well, that might be extreme but you get the picture.
Since our customers don’t get the chance to see us in person, we have to give a good impression over the phone. This means we have to work even harder to get their approval. Your introduction is very important and after all it is within the first 20 seconds. By having an upbeat tone and clear annunciation of what location and who they have reached, should be quite beneficial in this process. Listening to the needs of the customer and keeping the conversation flowing in a professional manner will help gain their trust in a facility they may be just learning about. Our good impression will give them in turn a good impression of the facility itself as well as the management team. What a great reflection!

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Written by Natalie Thomas, ultimate secret shopper.
Welcome to the secret shopping blog, an inside peek at the secret shopping and mystery shopping industry.

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Authored by: Sarah Little, Secret Shopping Guru

Ta ta for now…
Sarah

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Today’s secret shopping blog comes from Dana. She is expressing the frustration that we like to help customers avoid.

I walked out of the electric company and thought “I can’t quit the
electric company.”

My blog begins 2 years ago when I did not pay my electric bill
on time and I had to pay additional deposit in cash in order to have
service.

At the time I paid the deposit, I asked when would I get the deposit
back.

I was told if I pay on time for a year I would get it refunded. So
about 8 months in to my year of paying on time every month, I was in the electric company office and asked when would I get my deposit refunded. I was told Jan. 06.

I continued to pay my bill on time and in Dec. when I was in the
office paying my bill, I asked when in Jan. I would I get my deposit refunded.

I was told I would not get it refunded in Jan. It would be two years before I would get it refunded. I asked why I had been told it would be in a year and why I was told Jan. 06 was the end of that year.

I was told “I’m sorry I don’t why you were told that, but it would be two years before we will refund that.”

I work in a call center where we reserve storage units for the managers of the store when they can’t answer or their store is closed. We all try to give the same information to callers, as if they were talking to store themselves. They are told the same thing there as they were told on the phone.

We don’t want a situation where the customer goes in to the store and is told something else and then gets upset and leaves or quits.

Your business is probably not the only game in town, like the electric company. Your customers can and will quit you if you tell them two different versions of a story, won’t they.

This is why I walked out of the electric company and said to myself “I can’t quit the electric company.”

Dana

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And where we stop no one knows…

Sometimes some of my best ideas end up being so far from where I started that it is impossible to retrace my steps and remember how I got there. I remember a few projects that took a turn for the worse, but, all in all, the end results have been unique and fun.

When I’m ready for a change, or am asked to make one, I like to start with what I’ve got. I take the idea and “dream up” a little something different. I like to think of ways I could change a process and make it an entirely new service or idea.

Gather a little information and research what you’re aiming for. It’s always helpful to see what everyone else is doing, and what they aren’t doing. Sometimes what they aren’t doing can be the thing you do that gives you one up on them!

Anyone would jump at the chance to expand business and begin generating new clientele. One of the best ways to do that is to know your clients and ask them what they would like to see. This gives you a general direction to go in.

One of PhoneSmart’s more recent services is our Role Playing Helpline. I’d like to say that I thought of it, but it was Tron who came up with this innovative way of training. It really is the perfect tool. An employee can call in and get help with anything they have trouble with in their sales presentation.

What makes it so great is that the Helpline can be used by anyone at any level of sales experience. They can use it on their free time. And the best part is that it pays for itself 100 times over.

If you could gain just one more renter a month because your employee knew how to present the service, how much would you be willing to invest? I say invest. You really are making an investment when you hire an employee. You put, to some extent, the success of your business in their hands. They make first impressions and maintain some kind of rapport with your customers. It’s up to you if they are given the tools necessary to increase your revenue.

If you’d like to get onboard with this creative and powerful new tool contact us at sarahlittle@phone-smart.net.

And take some time to look at what you’ve got and dream up a little something that could liven up an old product or make a new product.

Sarah

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Welcome to the secret shopping blog, our window on the world of mystery shopping and secret shopping.

I had a frustrating afternoon yesterday. My kitchen sink drain was clogged. We tried plunging. No go. I tried a small ten foot drain snake. I thought for sure that woud get it. Nope. I went and got a lovely 25 foot snake on a self winding feeder. It worked great and I got some junk and gunk out of the drain. But the sink still wouldn’t run.

Well in order to get a 50 foot snake that you can actually navigate down the pipes, you need to spend a lot of money. To get the drain cleaner service out out, you have to spend a lot of money, too. So I called the different drain cleaner services and picked the one who had a smaller yellow page ad and appeared to be a private person. I figured he had lower over-heard and would be cheaper. He was cheaper than the rest, but I was still annoyed, becasue I just knew the clog was in the 26th foot of drain, just out of my reach.

But in talking to the drain guy while he ran his expensive tricked-out snake, I found out that he knew everything about his competitors. He knew many of the people by name, knew their prices and their sales pitches. This gave him great power to sell against them and to price himself cheap enough to have better margins than his competitors while making the total bill to the cusotmer quite a bit less.

Do you know your competitors? If not, you’d better secret shop them soon.

bye for now, Tron

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Welcome to the secret shopping blog, PhoneSmart’s diary of the mystery shopping and secret shopping professional.

Location! Location! Location!

At the end of every month we spend most of our time evaluating the shops we did at the beginning of the month. This month I noticed an unfortunate trend across the board; the majority of associates do not ask if they are conveniently located to the caller.

In case you may be unfamiliar with our evaluation form there is a question that reads, “Did the representative determine if the location is convenient for the caller?” The importance of getting agreement in this area can make or break a sale. There may be a number of competitors across the street or across town. In such a competitive market it is important to take advantage of every angle you can, and create the ‘ideal’ environment for your customers.

Every sales person knows the best way to make the sale is to ask questions on the phone that will get the customer’s commitment and allow them to sense value in your property. One of the most important questions, that I can almost guarantee the other guys in town aren’t asking, is, “Are we a convenient location for you?” The power of this seemingly innocent question can become one of your best selling tools.

A typical person shopping around for any service may call 4-5 locations. After they have made all their calls, how much will they remember about each individual location? It will probably become a muddled mess of information. If you however, take the initiative on the phone to ask this simple question, it will have an amazing affect on the customer. By asking, “Are we a convenient location for you?” the customer will have to verbally respond. Getting the caller to say ‘Yes’ will trigger a thought process in their mind that will equate convenience and value to your property. And now, as we sales people like to say, the customer will be in a ‘yes mode’. So when they go over the list of places they’ve called, yours will stand out in their minds. Some may even end their search right on the phone with you and decide to commit to your location.

What a great sales tool! If you and your coworkers can start implementing this small detail you will be quick to see what large effect it can have.

Ta Ta for now…
Sarah

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