Secret Shop Your Executives and Managers Too

Have you ever had the opportunity to be secret shopped? At first, it was thought that the owner of the business has no need to be shopped because they know what to do when customers have to be served. Secret shopping can also help those people at the top get a reality check sometimes. We all know that even we property owners need to understand what our managers are doing and what they are facing. Secret shopping the property managers might not be a bad idea to show them that they also have some opportunities in their customer service.

Now do not get it wrong. We are not saying that the property managers do not know how to do their job or do not know what their managers are going through. It is just being said that maybe a property owner should work in a store for a day or two and see how it is for your managers. Then, while working, a secret shopping agent gives them a call to see how they handle the customers. The secret shopping agent could call a couple of different times in the day just to catch the property owners at different situations. This will give the manager a snap shot of what is really like for the property managers to be shopped when they are least expecting it. This will allow managers to maybe rethink how they coach and train their associates around customer service.

There was an example of a manager of a large retail store being involved in secret shopping. He was in his department and a regular customer, or so he thought, came in to ask for assistance. The secret shopping agent proceeded to go along with the shop even though they identified he was a manager. It just so happens that same manager was shopped again in a different part of the store that same week. Both scores came back from the secret shopping agent and it revealed some interesting things for the general manager. It showed that even the leaders of the departments were inconsistent in their customer service presentations. One score was over a 90 percent, which their individual secret shopping score goal was 85 percent. The second score was a 56 percent very sub-par.  The manager was pulled into the general managers office where they had a conversation around consistency and expectations of a department manager.

So what does this show us? This shows us that even the property owners have some opportunities in the area of being consistent around customer service. They would not know that unless secret shopping assisted the manager in the example above. The secret shopping evaluation opened his eyes to show him that if he is not consistent, how can he expect his people to be. How can a property owner that expects a certain level of service receive such low secret shopping scores?

Maybe we all need to put ourselves in the shoes of our employees. We can go out there and sell just like them. We can take calls just like them. We can also receive customer issues just like them and see what they go through on a daily basis. After going through all of that, then we can see what our secret shopping scores would be.

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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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