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Why a Secret Shopper? > News & Record Article

CORPORATE SPIES
Date: June 30, Section: BUSINESS
Source: AMY JOYNER Staff Writer
Dateline: GREENSBORO

The bespectacled grandmother makes two quick, furtive looks over her shoulders and hefts her heavy purse onto the restaurant table. Betty unzips the bag an inch or so, then leans in close and whispers into a tape recorder inside.

"Our waiter is John. We were greeted by Jennifer and another Jon, " she says, her hand near her mouth. "We placed our order at 11:35. Jennifer replaced the napkins under our water glasses. "
Betty, whose last name isn't being used to protect her identity, is part of a specially trained, anonymous group of consumers working as corporate spies. She is on assignment for Customer 1st, a Troy Dolan Group company that hires mystery shoppers to check out how well service businesses treat their customers.

Retailers, restaurants, hotels, apartment complexes, grocery stores, banks, car dealerships and other companies hire Customer 1st to help them develop better customer service practices. Some businesses even hire mystery shoppers to check out their competitors.

Low prices and unique merchandise may help attract customers, but helpful, kind, courteous and conscientious service keep them shopping with a merchant, said Carl Phillips, Customer 1st's president. In a National Mystery Shopping Providers Association survey, 69 percent of people cited poor customer service as their primary reason for no longer doing business with a company.

Of course, there's no single definition for good customer service. Different businesses value different things, Phillips said, so Customer 1st tailors its mystery shopping program to a company's service expectations.

"We inspect what you expect, " is the company's motto.

"Through this secret shopper service, we view business through the customer's eyes, based on a predetermined set of criteria. Training staff to do a certain thing and then having them implement that behavior are two different things, " said W. Steve Branch, vice president of the merchants association.

Once a client's expectations are defined and employees have been trained in service techniques, Customer 1st deploys its secret shopping troops for a little reconnaissance work. The company, which has about 20 clients throughout the United States and Canada, sends shoppers out on about 8,000 secret missions every month. Customer 1st is part of a thriving nationwide mystery shopping industry, which includes hundreds of customers.

Phillips encourages his clients to tell their employees that they may encounter a secret shopper. But they aren't told when or how often mystery shoppers will come to the store.

"The most effective tool with mystery shopping is that associates know they're being shopped and what they're being tested for, " he said. "We suggest that it's often enough that the associates think anybody can be a mystery shopper. "

Bill Black Automotive hired Customer 1st about three years ago. Mystery shoppers regularly check out the company's Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Volkswagen dealerships and its used car lot.

The shoppers fill out a detailed checklist, rating the quality of customer service and such things as parking accessibility, informational signs, cleanliness, neatness of lots and sales floor area and whether the brochures are up to date. The shoppers also have to indicate if they are greeted every time they come within five feet of an employee, whether the salesperson was knowledgeable and whether he used the customer's name in a conversation.

"We're looking for people who take a step beyond the normal to get to the 'wow' experience from the customer standpoint, " Bill Black said. "The reason we're doing it is to find examples like that that we can reward. "

Black said his company's lengthy relationship with Customer 1st has proven a good tool for identifying customer service problems, as well as standout performance.

"It's just another way to measure how we're doing in the marketplace. The mystery shoppers can give you just one other layer, to give you kind of a self check, " he said. "I would absolutely not recommend it to any of my competitors. "

Secret shoppers, who pose as normal consumers, work all over the country for Customer 1st and other similar companies. Like the spies that they are, they're sent out with detailed orders to fulfill a specific mission without being detected.

Betty's latest mission for Customer 1st: enjoy a nice weekday lunch at an upscale Greensboro restaurant. It sounds like a plum assignment. But with each bite Betty is rating the experience - grading the quality of the food, testing to make sure her salad plate is cold, timing how long it takes to get a table on a Thursday afternoon, counting the minutes until her wine and food arrive, judging just how attentive the waiter and other restaurant staff are.

"I'm a very discerning customer, " said Betty, who must catch and remember dozens of details during a brief mystery shopping trip.

And through it all, the mystery shopper can't break her cover. She cannot let the waiter know that she is grading him and the restaurant.

Betty must simply play the role of an ordinary, inquisitive customer: What is your featured wine? Do you have a smaller water glass? Will you bring my dessert without whipped cream? What's the difference between your two side salads?

Betty, who is retired from a job in advertising sales, is a veteran mystery shopper. She has been in the field for about 10 years, working for Customer 1st and about 30 other mystery shopping companies. She has been to car dealerships, bowling alleys, movie theaters, apartment complexes, banks, financial planners, restaurants and all sorts of stores in her clandestine profession.

The work is a ball, she says, but "you couldn't make a living from it. " (Most mystery shopping companies reimburse shoppers for their expenses and pay a small wage that varies by assignment.)

During her lunch, Betty engages in breezy conversation with her guest. Few would suspect that she's here for anything more than a hearty, enjoyable lunch.

But there are clues.
Several times during the meal, Betty lifts her purse to her lap and whispers into a miniature tape recorder tucked into the leather bag. And once during the four-course lunch, she pulls a tiny notebook and nubby pencil from her purse and jots down a description of an employee. The woman, likely a restaurant manager, is not wearing a name tag. So, Betty must find some other way to identify the woman in her mystery shopping report.

Mostly, she keeps track of the staff's performance in her head, then rushes home to fill out her mystery shopping report. Within a few hours of lunch, Betty answers a nine-page questionnaire online, then sends the report to Customer 1st.

Betty's assessment of the restaurant: She has no complaints about the service, but the food was slow to arrive.

The waiters, waitresses and managers were extra attentive. They made food recommendations that she followed and enjoyed. They kept her water glass filled. They cleaned dirty napkins and removed used lemon slices from the table. They offered bread and other extras. They slid dry napkins under her wine and water glasses.

But the meal - from crab dip to key lime pie - took more than two hours. Much too long, Betty said.

"If I was on my lunch break, I'd already be late, " she said soon after the entrees arrived, once again glancing at her watch. "That's the kitchen's fault. "

Betty's assessment doesn't stay secret for long.

Her mystery shopping report is shared with restaurant management, who go over the results with employees.

That's crucial to a successful secret shopping program.

Merchants want to know the results of mystery shopping trips so they can assess how well they're doing with customers. If major problems are identified, managers can increase training for employees. And when employees provide superior service, they often are rewarded.

Robert Hager, vice president of Greensboro-based chain of 13 Omega Sports stores, said he's not simply trying to catch bad behavior when he hires mystery shoppers.

"We reward our people on mystery shopping, " said Hager, a Customer 1st client for five years. "We use it as a positive tool to find out who's doing a good job so we can praise them and reward them for what they've done. "

Said auto dealer Bill Black: "It's not looking for snakes under rocks. It's looking for people doing things right and going the extra mile for a customer. "