Reticular What?

Welcome to the secret shopping blog, where we keep a diary of our experience in the workd of secret shopping and mystery shopping.

My experience as a Secret Shopper has made me become much more aware of the service I get from any business. This is my “reticular activator” at work. “A reticular what” you say? Roy H. Williams defines it in the Wizard Tower Chronicles this way:

“The reticular activator is a mental trigger in your unconscious that directs your attention and causes you to notice and remember things you never intentionally committed to memory.”

Do you every notice that when you buy a car, the minute you drive it off the lot you see 5 more cars just like it? That’s your reticular activator. When I started secret shopping almost 2 years ago, I knew what I expected. But I did not know how to objectively determine the good and the bad. Now when I go to the grocery store, a restaurant or call my cellular customer service line, in the back of my mind, I’m secret shopping them.
When I leave a business where the service left a lot to be desired, I’m usually thinking how we can approach them with our secret shopping service. I’ll mention my experience at work the next day to my fellow shoppers and between us we’ll come up with a better way that the situation might have been handled.
In a case where the business representative has done an outstanding job with assistance, I have gone out on a limb and told them what I do for a living and what I thought of their service. In most cases, it surprises the person but they’ll usually smile at the compliment.
Then there have been times where I’ve been asked what I do for a living. When I tell them I’m a Secret Shopper, I’ve gotten some very different reactions. Some people think it’s great and they ask me how I got so lucky to do something like this. They usually assume that I do the kind of secret shopping where I get to go shopping at my favorite stores all day and spend someone else’s money. I’ll usually explain the different kind of shops that we handle for property management and they’re sometimes surprised that this industry needs something like secret shopping. It doesn’t diminish their enthusiasm for my job however. There are others who immediately say, “Are you secret shopping me right now?!” Their face has a very worried expression as if I might cause them to lose their job. That of course makes me wonder if I should be paying closer attention to them and there goes my reticular activator again.
Working as a Secret Shopper has opened my eyes wide to the world of customer service and sales. I’m always looking and listening for different ways to help the customer and pass the secret on to the clients we shop.

Laura

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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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