Are You Shopping Me?

When we hear the phone ring we generally have an idea of how the call is going to go.  We follow the five agreements throughout the call until the call is over.  So when we get a call that does not go according to plan we may assume that we are being, “secret shopped”.  Usually in the storage industry we have competitors calling to get pricing as well as the stores themselves secret shopping to make sure we are doing our job!!  So the first sign that I know I am being secret shopped is I ask if they know what they are going to be storing.  Most of the time the response I get is,  “I don’t know,” so when I get this response I try and get a little bit of information out of them so I can determine what size they are going to need.  Sometimes this is hard as they may be a little inexperienced in how to secret shop self storage so they may have no idea they really need to have some idea of size or what they will be storing!
The second way I can usually tell I am being shopped is they immediately ask for all our sizes and prices or they ask for 3 specific units.  The third and final way I can usually tell I am being shopped is that the person is asking for a specific size and they want the price with nothing extra (as in telling them about our location, amenities, etc.) and they are pretty rude and then they cut you off and don’t even give any of their information to you when you ask.  I have even been hung up on.  Of course all the experience with being shopped is also helpful in that when I go to shop someone myself, I can use many different tactics and sales techniques to get the information I need.

By Wendy Lane PhoneSmart call center reservations specialist, and business blog writer.

Thank you for visiting the PhoneSmart secret shopping blog, an inside peek into the mystery shopping and secret shopping business.

Brand New Storage Facility in Hollis, NY — 184-02 Jamaica Ave, Call Hector for a site tour, 718-454-0520, we even have alarms on each individual unit.

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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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