Secret Shopping and Property Management

If alien from outer space came down to Earth and needed a place to store their space ship, they would want to use a self storage center that uses secret shopping. Sound a bit bizarre, but many self storage customers have bizarre requests for self storage. The best property managers qualified to help the aliens or bizarre requests are those who use secret shopping as a training tool.

It’s very hard for property management to hold a straight face when approached by a bizarre request. That is why call center representatives have an advantage. The customer can’t see their smirks and shrugs. Either way property management and call center representatives must remain professional with bizarre self storage customers. This is one reason secret shopping is important to a self storage business, because you never know what kinds of bizarre requests you will answer for the next caller. Secret shopping prepares property managers to handle such requests.

Though the secret shopper who is secret shopping property managers can’t always match the level of bizarreness dished out from normal self storage customers, they can be pretty creative. Here are a few examples reported by property managers and call center representatives about bizarre phone calls from customers and secret shoppers. See if you can determine if it from a secret shopper or an actual customer.

A customer calls a self storage property and reveals to the property manager that his uncle had died. He further reveals that he was dead for a long time before his body was found. As responsible nephew, the customer wanted to take care of his dead uncle’s estate by putting it all away in a storage unit. So far, it is not a problem for the property manager. However, the customer continued and revealed more stomach sickening information. He asked the property manager if it would be ok if the furniture storage smelled like a dead body. Apparently, the furniture storage soaked up the stench of his uncle’s decaying body and he wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be a problem. Was this story fabricated from secret shopping, or is it true?

Recently a customer called for information about RV storage, an easy call for any property manger to handle. But if the property manager never had experience with secret shopping, he may have not been prepared for the customer’s next question. As it was, the customer’s wife had kicked him out of the house and he couldn’t afford a place to live. So he asked the property manager if he could live in the RV while it was in RV storage. Perhaps this story was created though secret shopping, or is it true? You decide.

A self storage unit can hold many odd things, but this customer’s request has some bite. A customer calls a self storage business needs furniture storage including a fish tank. After finding out the right unit size, the customer then asks if it would be ok if the fish tank had a live piranha in it. Secret shopping had helped this property manager think quickly on his feet. He informed the self storage customer that live animals are not allowed in the self storage unit. Can secret shopping be so clever, or do bizarre customers really exist?

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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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