It Is In Your Hands

As a business owner, we sometimes do not know what we are doing. Let us be honest we should be grateful that there is help out there for those who need it. As business owners, most of us try to figure things out on our own and that can result in a bigger loss that we maybe could have imagined. For example, how do we coach and train our associates when we are not there as often and we have a ton of other responsibilities? We try to rely on our managers or supervisors, but then who is seeing and hearing what they do? Well that is why secret shopping came into being and is a great that someone thought up the idea. Secret shopping is the only real way we can get in the moment coachings, trainings, and feedback. How awesome is that?

This impartial program is accurate and gives you great feedback. Some of us are terrific with detail and some are not. Unfortunately, we all know that sometimes there is some sort of favoritism in our workplace and outside opinion helps to eliminate that. Secret shopping has many different faces. Some companies use this program in terms of an agent walking into a business establishment and interacting with an associate in your stores. They go through the motions and act as if they are interested in the product that they sell. Then they get out of the sale in some way, document the interaction and give great feedback that can help the associate and the business. Another way this program is used is over the phone. This is where they call your business and they are looking for that great phone presence, presentation and performance. They fill out a form that the business has approved that flows through the call and should result in a sale.

Now this is where it is all in your hands on what you do with the information. The evaluations that are filled out are then sent to the business owner. The business owners then have choice whether to keep the information to themselves or use the information gathered to coach their associate. Of course the second option will lead to higher results. It is all up to you as a business owner.

One of the last topics of secret shopping that will be discussed here is feedback shops. In the previous two mentions of this revolutionary service, the associate is never aware that someone is shopping them. This option actually allows the shopper to give instant feedback after the call.

Feedback shops are, in most opinions, the best method of this program. In most other methods, the manager gets the print out of what the employee needs to work on or a CD of the call. Sometimes the associate has to wait weeks after the agent has actually shopped them. In that time, those associates have already helped maybe, on a great month, over 100 potential clients or customers. Then they receive that feedback that they have been waiting for. With feedback shopping, the associates receive real time feedback that they can then turn around and use on the next call they receive or the customer they interact with in person.

Secret shopping , no matter what for, can greatly help your business. With the amount of new talent that we hire as business owners, we can stress enough the importance of making sure they are properly trained and their performance managed. Secret shopping is a powerful tool for us trying to manage our staff effectively in terms of customer service. The detail and the feedback that is provided to us are great and we can use that to better our business. We honestly could do a great job on our own and try to manage our staff through out own methods, but why not relieve some of the stress we put on ourselves and have someone else do some of the work for us?

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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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