retail intelligence (somewhat long)

[Slow-Jo]

you are so my F#$% hero! lol! its people like you that make me go to work tomorrow! XD

[Despina83]

SC: lets get one thing straight...you work in retail because you dont have the intelligence to do anything else...unless I ask you a question keep your mouth shut

You rolled your eyes at her? I would have had a word with that bitch! Consequences be damned. I would have been absolutely floored, completely stunned, if somone ever said that to me.

[HALFHUMANHALFZOMBIE]

Er? That would kind of ruin the whole idea of a secret shopper. They're not supposed to be recognizable. If you were outed as a secret shopper, according to my dad, you weren't able to SS that company ever again. Because they'd start playing up to you.

Yeah. The Secret Shopper shouldn't at least insult the employer in any way or they shouldn't have the right to be served. They could act a little difficult with wanting something as a SS to drive their patience but should be fully knowledgeable that the person serving them has no control over every little thing!

[matty]

It seems that this secret shopper was just another SC!

No legitimate secret shopper organisation would (or, at least, should) allow store staff to be insulted in this way.

I am aware of one relatively large retailer in my area that has made it policy that secret shoppers are not used. They feel that secret shoppers often given inaccurate results, not necessarily through any fault of the "shopper", but simply because it is a contrived interaction, not a "live" customer.

So what they do instead is have their registers set up to randomly print an added line on a certain number of receipts that encourages the customer to complete a customer satisfaction survey (I think it is over the phone or online) in exchange for a discount coupon or gift voucher.

[Record Store Tough Guy]

When the record store I worked at twice was still a Blockbuster Music, they didn't use "professional" secret shoppers. They always sent a member of management to a store that didn't know them. That way, we knew exactly what to look for, and there was no incentive to give them a bad score just to screw them over. Only problem is they usually asked several specific questions, and we could usually sniff them out. If we suspected anything, we gave them the whole spiel, so there were probably a few customers who weren't SS's that got exceptional service. I'd think that was an intended side effect, but I don't give upper management credit for being that farsighted.

[Broomjockey]

Ha, at my first theatre, our mystery shops used specific coupons to get in. And Only Those Coupons. So on slow days we'd actually call around and say "Mystery Shopper, looks like (insert description)." And we usually got a couple a week, since we were the busiest theatre in the city. We usually did pretty good except on some things like "Parking lot clean" and such.

[Slow-Jo]

we get mystery shoppers also. not as many as you guys do.

though they do seem to send the shoppers at the dumbest time of the year.
like once they came during a farmers festival (its pretty much an excuse for the whole town to get smashed and have a caravel) we are right beside the fairgrounds and is the only fast food place for about 1km. so we get tons of people the 4 days it runs.

i felt bad for the one kid who worked that day, he was one of those guys that would bend over backwards.
he got a secret shopper that day, which of course had to be the busiest day of the whole bloody year! the place was a bit of a mess, and he was the only one working upfront(we have a staff shortage problem going on) so he got really low on his report. that really hurt him bad.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Actually had the same thing happen to me. I kept my mouth shut through out the whole ordeal and just sat there ane meekly took this person's abuse. I handed out the recipt and sent them on their way.

On their way out I was like you admonished for failing to extend the parting phrase and inviting them back to my store. I countered back with "I did not forget nor did I refuse to give the parting comments out of spite for your actions. I followed the instructions of the customer and kept my mouth shut unless I was asked a question which you never did. I did as you instructed. After all, the customer is always right."

And then I had to answer to the boss for being rude to the SS. I asked the boss to pull out the tape and review the whole situation. Once he saw that I obeyed the SS's request and saw my response he got on the phone to corporate and had a massive ass-chewing session with the corporate office.

End result? Boss gets negative marks removed from my record, the store gets no rating (pending another SS visit which we passed with flying colors) and I get the warm fuzzies of telling a SS that they were a real douchebag without saying that they were douchebags.

M

[Gurndigarn]

So what they do instead is have their registers set up to randomly print an added line on a certain number of receipts that encourages the customer to complete a customer satisfaction survey (I think it is over the phone or online) in exchange for a discount coupon or gift voucher.

That's better, but it's still going to give skewed results... it's only going to get the type of people who think that discounts or vouchers are worth their time, but it's going to miss people who don't want to spend their time with questions. And those subsets of people, using an overgeneralization, have different desires in service. In addition, it's more likely to get people who have a complaint. So they don't really get statisticly unbiased opinions.

/statistics class review

[going gaga]

Something like that has happened to one of my colleges too, she got an immediate fail 0% on the mystery shop

Why because she wasn’t there.
Which ok, would be understandable if you didn’t factor in two things-

A) There was no one in but her for the entire day, and we don’t have the hours to have two people in on a Sunday.

B)Seeing as she was on a seven hour shift , she had taken a lunch hour .The hour she was entitled to by the company policies. She was gone for the total of thirty minutes.
It broke her heart, because the company wanted an answer for her ‘appalling’ mystery shop.

[Qaeria]

Too Funny.

When I worked for Loblaws, we had a secret shopper that had a similar attitude. I have never agreed with "The Customer is always right" mentality, and I will not be a pushover, regardless if there is a big nasty corporate entity above me. I have worked Customer service far longer than most of those white collar fruits have been alive, and I make no apologies for my attitude.

Our mystery shopper when on to question my intelligence or genetics, I cannot remember exactly, but no sooner than she finished talking, I told her to get the f**k out of the store as we will not tolerate abusive behaviour from ANYONE. 5 minutes of total 120dB suckyness later, and the police were called to escort the psycho from the premesis.

When the report came in, of course the shopper tried to 'fail' us, etc, but the GM notified the DM about what had happened, and coincidentally the company lost their contract with loblaws because of it, and I was promoted to CSM that very day.

I can appreciate encouraging repeat business, however I have found that CSR's that don't exclusively kiss customer ass tend to be respected more, and the repeats are still there. Maybe customers don't entirely suck, but it is Corporate that sucks.

[Boozy]

You rolled your eyes at her? I would have had a word with that bitch!

I think rolling one's eyes is a healthy reaction. There's no sense in getting worked up over someone like that. They're not worth it, and their opinions are worth even less.

I think the best part of this story is that the SC in this case could get fired from her mystery shopping job. SCs are always threatening to get US fired, and now the tables have turned. I love it.

[smileyeagle1021]

I've only had 4 test calls, 3 I passed with flying colors (2 were checking for nothing other than to see if I was offering to enroll people in the frequent traveller program... which I always do because I get gift cards if I enroll enough people and 1 was a hotel doing calls into the center to see if they liked how we handled the calls). Of course, this isn't CR.com, this is CS.com, this story is about the 4th one. First off, the fact that I failed actually couldn't hurt me because the hotel was not authorized to be making test calls at that time so I could have done pretty much anything and gotten away with it. Here's the best part though... they were testing us on how we handled rooming list groups... and the group they were calling on wasn't loaded onto our system yet... and they failed me because I offered to reserve them a room at a normal rate and leave a message for the sales manager to contact them as soon as the group information was straightened out... so double fail for that hotel... not getting group info up on time and doing anauthorized test calls (which is sad, because my understanding is to get authorization all they have to do is speak to any center manager and say Hey we're doing test calls... the center needs to know about this because test calls affect our stats and they need to know in advance to adjust the targets... btw the targets aren't listed until the end of the week, so we wouldn't know whether or not they had been adjusted until after we had taken the calls... I may be way off on how they get authorization though and why).

[king4aday]

there has been a couple replies about me only rolling my eyes. I even told me boss that was what I did. Frankly...the mall I work in has been dead this christmas season. My boss said I had every right to kick her out...but I chose not to because we need to make some type of profit (currently for the month we are 28% down from last year). I made the decision to eat my pride and just go with it out of the sheer hope that she would spend some money.

[matty]

Just a quick story about secret shoppers I didn't think to post earlier...

In my previous job, the hours were basically 9am to 5:30pm. However, while people may practically bang down the doors of supermarkets etc. the minute they open, the nature of what we sold meant that you would almost never get a genuine customer before about 10am or 11am.

Somehow, I never got mystery shopped while I worked there (as far as I know! )

However, one of my co-workers got a mystery shop report with a not-too-good score. Guess what time the secret shopper turned up? Yep, 9:05am. So, they complained on their report that the staff did not pay attention/that they were still setting up for the day etc. Now, fair enough, we should be set up by 9am, but it was pretty much accepted by the entire team, right up to management, that our "sales energy" needed to be focussed on the lunchtime and afternoon rush.

And this guy is one of the best salespeople there! I guess my point is to agree with what some others have said: that secret shoppers, customer satisfaction surveys etc. are never really accurate.