Money calling

Some thoughts and I would like to share for today’s secret shopping blog…our diary of the secret shoppng and myystery shopping business.

I once heard that a manager said, “We know when we are being shopped.” Then his boss replied, “Then why didn’t you get 100% on the evaluation?” It’s the million dollar question.

Apparently, he didn’t know he was being shopped or he gave his best on another call. We try to employ every resource we can when shopping so the shops “stay fresh and new.” We rotate shoppers, change times and days of the shops and even use *69 before calling, to name a few things. It’s not that any of these are groundbreaking ideas, but simple basics that we go by.

Maybe the golden rule is to treat every call like you are being shopped.

Don’t waste the customers’ time being windy. If the customer is letting you talk, keep going. If they say they need to go, wrap it up quickly. Control the pace of the call. If you need to speed up a little to get it all in, practice until it all sounds great. Usually callers give you about 5 minutes before they become impatient. We have some calls that run way over 6 minutes and I had one the other day that was almost 9 minutes.

We do normally have a time limit for shops. This time limit saves the evaluators from having to listen to a bunch of really long calls. We try to never stay on a call longer than five minutes. If the person we are shopping can’t get us in the “Yes mode” in five minutes, then it was not a successful call.

I have read somewhere that on the phone you only have 8 seconds to make a good impression, but in person, it can take 15 minutes. So get to the point, when you are on the phone.

Avoid putting the customer on hold. If you have to, do what you need to do and get back to the phone. We use shops on a regular basis that keep the caller on hold for 2 minutes or more. (see above point for more information). Would you wait on hold 2 minutes waiting for help?

Some employees don’t like the whole secret shopping world. We have a person that we shop that will flat out refuse to give any information if they think they are being shopped. They make up excuses like; “I am really busy can I call you back?”, or “I’ll give you another number to call for information” (it’s a call center number). I called him three days in a row and each day I talked to him he said that he had three customers at the front desk that needed help. It made me want to drive over there and see for my own eyes how busy this person really was. Does he do this to all callers?

We love it when people do well on their shops. We are not the bad guys. We cheer for everyone. Trust me; it takes less time to evaluate a good shop then a bad one. You’ll often hear one of the evaluators say out loud “100%!” or some other exclamation of a shop well done.

Don’t cringe every time the phone rings. Think of every ringing as an opportunity to get another customer into your place of business. Are there going to be those completely weird, off-the-wall calls that you’ll talk about for days? Yes. But thank goodness for the little bit of humor throughout the day.

Quote of the day…..

“Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.” Mary Kay Ash

thanks, Natalie

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

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