What If They Don’t Want Help?

I love the idea of secret shopping and how it can be effective if used correctly. I enjoy being a pretend customer looking for storage, seeing how different managers across the nation encourage people to shop at their facility. We, at PhoneSmart, have just started our Feedback Secret shopping program. It is designed to instantly give feedback on the presentation right after the call is completed. This way, they can take that feedback and change their behaviors for the next call. I think the program is awesome and can be effective, except when giving feedback to those whom do not want it. Some people do need a reality check.

I secret shopped a gentleman yesterday and he did a great, no he did a phenomenal job taking care of me as if I were a potential client. He explained how his facility was laid out in terms of amenities and how I would be saving so much more money if I rented today. I gave him praise for doing a great job around the bulk of the call. When I went to give him feedback on something that would help his presentation, he did not receive it well. He went on to tell me that he has been in this industry for more than a decade and he understands how the caller thinks and what they respond to. I was trying to let him know that not all customers are the same and some want more than just a great price. They want to know what they are getting for the price and a good practice is to build value in the facility before the self storage rates are given. He did not agree with that and once again went into how he knows better.

While secret shopping this individual, he had some valid points, but the whole idea of feedback shops is to get some constructive criticism and better yourself, even if you already to a great job. This manager needed a bit of a reality check if he believes that all the people that call him want to be talked to and care about the same thing. If he uses a cookie-cutter presentation for he will lose a percentage of potential clientele that need to hear the value and convenience of location before hearing the price. Take all feedback as a way for us to help you better succeed. Reality is, if what he is doing was very effective he would have 100% occupancy. We also shop his competitor a few blocks away, they use the price stall technique and currently have very near 100% occupancy.

Like they say, You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

Joel Little, Experienced Manager.

Thanks for reading our secret shopping blog. We offer call center, sales training and secret shopping to the sales industry.

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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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