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  • Secret To Real Secret Shopping Success
    By admin on March 20, 2009 | No Comments  Comments

    Real secret shopping can be an asset to any business, whether it is big or small. This is because it gives you an honest perspective of what happening with the person who matters the most – the consumer. Many business owners are still a little apprehensive about hiring a covert shopping service to do an assignment for them. It can be very helpful to know just what these kinds of services do and how they can be helpful for your business.

    Research Tells Us

    Before getting into the technicalities of real secret shopping , its important to look into more traditional research strategies and know why they do not always work. What every business is looking for is customer feedback direct from the customer – this will give you a clear idea of what is working, what customers would like to see and what needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, the only ways to really get this information is via consumer surveys. When completed correctly and honestly, there is nothing like a consumer survey to give you the quality feedback you need. But more often than not, a consumer feedback would not be filled up at all. Even if you offer something in exchange for a completed survey, chances are that the information you will get will be sketchy and incomplete.

    Anonymous shopping services give you the advantage of putting a completely impartial customer right on the ground floor. They will be able to give you a complete and honest run-down of what the consumer experience is really like in your store. Apart from that, they can concentrate on specific areas of the consumer experience as well. For example, perhaps you are concerned about how customers feel about your stores return policy. Are you interested in knowing the feedback regarding customers of a particular profile Under cover shopping services can help you get all this information and more.

    How It Works

    If you are interested in hiring the services of a real secret shopping group, its best that you do a little research first. This is for two reasons – one is that there are a lot of shoddy shopping services out there. Doing a background check first can help you avoid making a bad decision. Secondly, there are a number of quality check shopping services that specialize in certain fields. For instance, it is not uncommon to find companies that offer shopping services for hotels or restaurants.

    Next, you will need to assess exactly what you want out of your real secret shopping plan. Apart from making a personal assessment of this, you will also need to talk to a representative from the shopping service to draw out a game plan for the shopping assignment. There are a number of services that you can use for the assignment – for instance, shoppers can take photos of product displays, return merchandise or test your customer service helpline. There are a lot of options so it is best to be clear about what you want out of the assignment.

    Another thing to remember about undercover shopping companies is that it is best to use their services on a regular basis. This is important as it keeps track of whether any new changes you have made are working. By regularly assessing your business from the consumer perspective, in a completely impartial manner, you will get a much better grip of where your business is headed. Investing in the services of real secret shopping is a surefire way to ensure your business is always on the right track.

    Athens Storage

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  • How Could You Not Use Us?

    Wendy Lane, evening supervisor at the PhoneSmart call center offers a view of our secret shopping projects.
    Welcome to the PhoneSmart Secret Shop blog an inside look at the self-storage secret shop and mystery shop industry.

    Occasionally I do some secret shopping for market research. When I take on that project I know I am going to be speaking with a lot of different people and personalities. Because we have such excellent training in fielding calls and selling the store I am somewhat taken aback by the way some store managers and employees handle the calls. For instance I was calling one day and actually had a salesperson at one of the facilities tell me I had to call back the next day because their system was already shut down for the day! I could have been a very wealthy person looking for storage and lots of it and they just told me to call back tomorrow. If it were necessary for me to make a decision today that person would have cost their company real profits.
    There are a lot of reasons to use PhoneSmart. What we do here is make sure that person does not have to call back tomorrow. They can take care of their storage needs right when they call. This makes good sense. The self-storage industry is so competitive that it seems very destructive to tell a caller they will have to wait until tomorrow because it would inconvenience a store employee to retrieve information. If I have to wait I will go down the list to find a place where I can get that information right now.
    Some places have their prices on their answering machines. No human contact just a recording and message to call back if you want the unit. What happens when they keep calling and can never get a real person to secure a unit? That can be very frustrating for a customer who needs to have arrangements made in advance. That is another example of how PhoneSmart can come to your rescue and give the customer attention they deserve and help them secure a storage unit. So if you ever call around for storage pricing you will see how different each facility is, sometimes good and sometimes bad!!

    Why would you not use us? At PhoneSmart we turn your missed calls into profit.

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