The Best Secret Shopping Tool

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 those who need it. As business owners, most of us try to figure things out on our own and that results in a bigger loss than we maybe had 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 gift from heaven. Think about it. Secret shopping is the only real way we can get real time coachings, trainings, and feedback. How awesome is that?

Secret shopping is impartial and accurate. Some of us are great with detail and some are not. Unfortunately, we all know that sometimes there is some favoritism in our workplace and secret shopping helps to eliminate that. Secret shopping has many different faces. Some companies use secret shopping 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 method of secret shopping 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. These secret shopping forms are then sent to the business owner and then their associate is once again evaluated, and then sent to the business owner. One of the last topics of secret shopping that will be discussed here is feedback secret shops. In the previous two mentions of secret shopping, the associate was never aware (unless they have a keen sense) that they were being shopped. However, a feedback secret shopping option actually allows the shopper to give instant feedback after the call.

Feedback shops are, in most opinions, the best method of secret shopping. In most other methods of secret shopping, 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, even months after the secret shopping agents have 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 results that they have been waiting for. With feedback secret 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 the industry, can greatly help your business. With the amount of new talent that we hire as business owners, we cannot stress enough the importance of making sure they are properly trained and their performance managed. Secret shopping is a gift for us trying to manage our staff effectively in terms of customer service. The detail and the feedback that is provided to us is 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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