implement with shopping

Warning: gzinflate() [function.gzinflate]: data error in /home/secretsh/public_html/wp-includes/http.php on line 1787

Thanks for surfing over to the secret shopping blog, where we deal with mystery shopping and secret shopping issues.

I am at a marketing conference for people in the apartment industry, given by the Multi Fmaily Pro magazine. Several of the people in the sessions I attended expressed their frustrations about training and policy issues. Many felt that they can give a good training session and create great training materials, but they all felt like they lose something after the training. Many of the proceedures and initiatives don’t get implemented, or only get half implemented.

One of the first ideas people had at the session was to secret shop their staff after an initiative or a training topic was introduced in order to make sure that people understood the topic, knew what was expected of them and followed through.

This is of course great news for me, but you do have to be careful how you create a secret shopping expedition in order to ensure you are testing for and evaluating the exact things you need to see. Be clear in the behaviors or sales talk that you want your staff to practice. Then decide if you are going to use the initial secret shops as a test of how well you designed the training…did it stick? …or if you are going to test how well the staff is doing the follow-up they knew they were expected to do.

Sometimes you think you covered a topic well and you didn’t. Sometimes you covered the topic well, were clear in your expectations and your staff just didn’t feel like following through. Be careful you don’t spank your staff if you were at fault. And be careful your staff doesn’t ignore your initiatives and try to make you feel like it was your fault. It can get a little tricky. Good luck with your efforts.

bye for now,
Tron

Tweet This Post 

Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.