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Welcome to the secret shopping and mystery shopping blog. We hope you come back again.

You Know What Happens When You Make Assumptions…

In the PhoneSmart Secret Shopping department, one of our goals is to help our clients avoid making assumptions. The reason is simple, it makes it harder to find easy opportunities to help the caller and get their business. It’s usually never a good idea to make assumptions about your potential customer or their situation.

Here are some of the common assumptions we run into and the reasons to avoid them.

• The date the product or service is needed
In our experience in the rental industry, many times, the client we’re shopping will assume that the caller has an immediate need. If what they are looking for is unavailable immediately, unfortunately, they’ve already told the caller that they don’t have anything available. It’s much more difficult to regain the caller’s interest and attention after this than it is to just ask when they need service in the first place.
• The convenience of the office or location
Usually the clients we shop will ask if the caller knows where the office or facility is located, but not if it’s convenient. This is important because it helps the manager determine what they need to do next. If the caller lives across town from where they’re located, our client has to do that much more to sell their product or service and encourage a visit.
• What product or service best suits the caller’s needs
In the storage industry, one of the most important things to do is determine the right size for the job. If the caller is vague or doesn’t really know, that’s not the time to guess. It’s better to keep asking questions to determine their needs. Another good way to get around this is to help them by comparing and giving visual aids to judge size. The manager could also offer a few choices if the caller isn’t sure.
• The budget
Sometimes during our secret shops, we hear a discouraging tone in the manager’s voice. They don’t give the caller a chance to decline the sale, they assume that they aren’t going to – so they don’t.
• Their hesitation
It might be easy to assume that a challenge or concern when asked for the business means “No Sale!” But again, it’s an assumption. If our client is presented with a challenge or more questions about the service, they simply have another chance to show pride in their service or product.

One assumption that is safe to make is “I’m going to make this sale!” If our clients answer their calls with the assumption that they are going to get business from every customer, they will give everyone the same opportunity and likely get more business. Assuming that everyone is a potential buyer will also help them be more consistent with their service and it will be better service to boot!

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What is the PhoneSmart?

PhoneSmart is a wholly owned subsidiary of StorageMart. StorageMart is a company with assets of 300 million dollars that currently operates 46 storage facilities. The owners of StorageMart, the Burnam family, formerly operated Storage Trust. One of the larger storage businesses in the country, Storage Trust contracted with a third party call center to handle its incoming calls and received many thousands of calls a month. PhoneSmart was created based on the experiences and successes at Storage Trust.

PhoneSmart Call center is a solution for two of the most perplexing problems in the self-storage industry.

1. Facility managers can’t answer all the phone calls their facilities receive. Managers are often out on the site showing units or doing facility maintenance. When they are in the office, they may be walking a new tenant through a lease, visiting with a current tenant or making past-due calls. Mangers can miss calls; and potential renters call before and after hours, too. Do you know how many calls your stores miss? It might be a painful answer.

2. One of the primary ways people find out about a storage facility is through the yellow pages. I don’t have to tell you how large a chunk of revenue a facility’s yellow page advertising eats up. It is enormous. What does it actually cost to get someone to call your facility? A lot. If your manager can’t get to the phone for one reason or another, is the caller going to call back… or move on to the next ad in the yellow pages? How much money do facility owners spend to help their competitors fill units? Even if you get a lot of your renters from your location, most people call first before coming in to your stores.

At PhoneSmart, we turn those missed calls into profit. PhoneSmart is a roll-over call center. Any time the manager can’t get to the phone, or is already talking on the phone, the new caller is forwarded on to us.

We have made a huge investment in the latest telephone technology. Our technology enables us to separate the people calling about renting a unit from the people calling to talk to the manager about issues other than a new rental. If the person wants the manager, that call is forwarded to the manager’s individual voicemail box. The manager can retrieve the message when things calm down at the store and then return the call.

Our system also determines the exact facility the caller had dialed and brings the current information for that facility up on the computer screen in front of the sales person answering the phone at PhoneSmart.

We can then walk the caller through a consultative sales process. The caller makes a reservation confirmed with a major credit card, which is forwarded to the store manager. If the caller does not have a credit card or is unsure of a move in date, the information is automatically faxed or emailed to the manager for timely follow-up. We have developed several excellent ways to drive callers to your store. We can help you integrate systems and procedures that will convert as many of our leads into rentals as you possibly can.

PhoneSmart is not an answering service. PhoneSmart has many advantages over an answering service type or customer service type call center. Because we focus on the rental calls, we can reduce the total cost of call center services to our clients. Forwarding tenant calls to the manager means the manager can deal directly with people she or he is on a first name basis with. When we do talk to your current renters, we can give them a great customer service experience, by answering basic questions for them or referring them on to the store manager.

Because we ask for a bonus from our clients when we write a credit card confirmed reservation, our motivation is to maximize every call. It also means we can offer performance incentives to our reps. Other call centers hire lower wage “operators” or “customer service reps”. We hire sales people and invest in their training. Therefore, we not only give a professional presentation of your facility, we also sell it. Our job is not to clear calls, but to send people to your store. The credit card confirmed reservation is a great way to get people to go to your facility.

Another benefit of dealing with PhoneSmart, is knowing we are a part of a successful storage business. We know about self-storage. We have also made the commitment to be a leader in call center technologies. Because of our commitment to technology solutions, we have an experienced IT expert on staff .

If we can create just one new rental a month that a facility otherwise would have missed, our service pays for itself in almost every instance.

What results can you expect from us?

PhoneSmart has been taking calls since December of 2000.

StorageMart compared total occupancy rates in June of 2000 for their established, mature stores with total occupancy rates for these stores in June of 2001. There was a 7 percent increase. The only operational difference was PhoneSmart. I’m not sure we can claim all seven points, but we were certainly responsible for several of them.

In 2002, PhoneSmart was credited with 16% of total rentals for 34 StorageMart stores, totaling over 2,500 rentals. If we can talk to people about your site, we can help you rent units.

PhoneSmart talked to over 100,000 self-storage callers in 2002 for all of its 40 plus client companies. That adds up to a lot of experience, experience you can put to work for your company.

PhoneSmart sent its 200,000th lead/reservation in April of 2005. Our experience in turning inquiries into rentals is second to none.

PhoneSmart also offers a secret shopping service to help you make sure your phones are being answered correctly at your property. We have recently added a sales lead follow-up service to help you make sure you are renting to as many of the leads we create as you can. And our sales training material will help your staff sell as well as we do.

PhoneSmart is also actively preparing for the future. We have a redundant phone center that is located on the other side of town on a different spoke of the phone and utility grid, so that in the event of service disruptions or disasters, we can continue to provide great service to our clients through our back-up center. We continue to develop our technologies to be able to offer superior service for years to come.

We have been providing secret shopping services to clients for 3 years. Some use us just for monitoring. Some use us for moving their sales and customer service programs forward. We are mystery shopping professionals who know how to mystery shop. We give your staff a chance to shine and give you a chance to make some real improvements. This secret shopping blog is one way to help people learn more about the secret shopping business.

To find out more about PhoneSmart and how it can help you profit from your missed calls, email Tron Jordheim, the PhoneSmart director at tron@phone-smart.net or call 1-866-639-1715. Forgive us if you are put into voicemail, we may be busy writing a credit card confirmed reservation for one of our forty plus clients. Or you can find us at www.phone-smart.info .

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You’ve heard it said about a sales person. “He can sell ice to Eskimos”. Usually we take this to mean the sales person was so good at persuasion and so hypnotically dazzling that he could sell people something they don’t need. There is the suggestion that the sales person cheated the Eskimos because they have plenty of free ice in a good winter. We usually mean this quote as an insult and a compliment at the same time. If your secret shopping evaluation said “Sells ice to Eskimos.” you might not be sure how to take it.

In today’s secret shopping blog, I’d like to take a different look at this saying. If you were trying to build a business selling a product or service, wouldn’t you want customers that knew the value of what they were buying? Wouldn’t you seek out the people who knew the most about your business and try to find a way to satisfy their requirements? Wouldn’t those people become your biggest users and biggest fans if you served them well? Wouldn’t your sales techniques revolve around what those people in the know taught you?

One would think that Eskimos know a lot about ice. I would bet their languages have many ways of describing ice. Some live in ice houses part of the year, hunt on ice during hunting season, kayak around ice flows and put ice cubes in their Coca Cola. If you knew about the different uses they had for ice and how ice needs to be for each of their uses, you could build a very nice business selling ice to Eskimos. If you could get the right consistency and coldness of pre-cut blocks, shaped especially for walls, ceilings and tunnels, you could sell pre-cut igloos to Eskimo families who are too busy to select and cut their own ice blocks. Eskimos have busy, demanding modern lives that don’t always leave them enough time to savor the traditional enjoyments. Buying prefab igloo ice would allow them more time to enjoy the great outdoors. Your mystery shoppers will need to be aware of how yor retail people approach iglooe ice.

If you knew the kind of ice that was required to keep seals preserved for processing after a hunt, you might be able to sell “Hunter Ice” as well. With the changes global warming is bringing to the arctic, the right kind of ice may not be available to hunters at the times they need it. I can only imagine the disappointment in taking a big seal for your family only to have it spoil before you can get it home and processed.

There are probably kayak races that are held each year in areas that used to have consistent ice flows. I can imagine that some kayakers would be very disappointed to run a race with no ice flow obstacles. If a company could overcome the transportation issues, it could probably sell a lot of ice to the big races with big purses to attract the best competitors and the best sponsors. A “Kayak Ice” line might not sell to many events, but those transactions would generate a lot of revenue for the ice company and the race organizers.

Certainly your ice company would want the exclusive in the concession booths that offered cold soft drinks to the audience. Knowing that the same company that can provide the best quality “Igloo Ice”, “Hunter Ice” and “Kayak Ice” is putting its best “Drinking Ice” in the soft drink machines would allow the concession stands to charge a little more per cup and they’d probably sell more drinks.

What about selling refrigerators to Eskimos. Have any of you seen the Larsen “Far Side” cartoon of the sales man floating away on his boat, waving good-bye to the Eskimos who are standing beside their new refrigerators? What do you think when you see the cartoon? Do you think, “Wow that guy must be some kind of B.S. artist.”? Do you think, “Those Eskimos are suckers.”? Maybe there is a lot more going on there. If you look at the expressions on the characters faces, you see that they are going to miss each other.

Just because it is cold in the arctic, doesn’t mean the temperature is always right for all the things you want to chill. Have you ever seen what happens to a nice head of lettuce if it is kept too cold? Or what happens to apples if your humidity levels are off? What about the seal meat from the hunt? Keep your game refrigerated at the wrong temperature and your family might go hungry. Many newer refrigerators have cool amenities like crushed or cubed ice from the door and filtered drinking water from the door. If the company that provided the best ice for outdoor use, also sold its own brand of refrigerators with crushed and cubed ice available with a touch of your finger, it could develop brand loyalty that would create years of profitable growth and many happy customers.

If your business was ice or refrigerators, would the Eskimos do business with you? Do you know enough about what your customers need and like? When someone who knows a little something about storage looks at your place, do they say, “Yes, this is good.”? Try thinking of yourself as the ice sales person who has just been awarded all the lands north of the Artic Circle as your new sales territory. Do you think you could develop a good business?

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