The pulse of self storage secret shops

Welcome to the secret shopping blog, where we keep an eye on mystery shopping and secret shopping trends. We recently met with one of our self storage clients that we have been secret shopping for several years. We wanted to see what recent trends we are noticing. We also wanted to see how the teamwork between our shopping crew and the storage store staff is developing. In the ideal world, the people we secret shop see us as a positive part of their team, helping them to do better at their jobs. Here is our report from Sarah, Laura and Natalie from our secret shopping team:

In reviewing the last quarter of evaluations, we found that the managers seem to:

• Have a cheerful greeting
• Sell their store before giving the price (by listing amenities/security features)
• Tie in the benefits of the amenities
• Determine the best size for the caller needs
• Build rapport with the callers
• Pay attention and listen to the callers
• Close with a positive statement

The trends on some of the specific fields are:

• About half of the managers invite the caller to the site
• One third ask for a reservation
• When answering the phone managers use a complete greeting
• Let the call roll over to the call center (if applicable) when they are too busy in the store
• Seem to have a lack of confidence after customers voice a concern. Keeping a positive tone in their voice can help. If the managers identify what some of the concerns or hesitations are, they can learn to overcome them. They can even brainstorm some phrases to use when they hear these concerns.
• It is rare for the managers to ask for a phone number. One of the reasons may be that most stores have caller id. When we make our shops the number will appear as out of area, or blocked, so they don’t automatically have the phone number.

We can see great progress in the store when they really become motivated to use their evaluations as a training tool or incentive.

After getting some feedback from some of our current customers we learned that:

• The employees appreciate the recognition awards
• Managers consistently use the evaluations as a continuous training tool
• Managers ask the higher scoring employees to help train the other staff
• Goals were set by individual managers as to the standard base score
• Evaluations were worked into an ongoing incentive program

Some of the employees use “being busy” as an excuse for providing poor phone customer service. The clients we talked to agree that in-store traffic shouldn’t have any effect on the potential customer on the phone. Their opinion is that the person walking into the store is already there, so extra attention and focus is needed to help get teat phone caller in the store, too.

These are the trends we have noticed so far this year. Take these positive and negative trends and see how they compare to your company or business?

bye for now, Tron

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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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