Telephone Mystery Shoppers – How They Make Our Training Program Successful

The Variety of Telephone Mystery Shoppers is Key

SkilCheck Services is one of the first telephone mystery shopping companies that job seekers encounter in their quest for mystery shopping employment. With over 40 years of experience, we have established a strong presence in the mystery shopping industry. We utilize an exceptional mystery shopping platform, ISecretShop.com. Through this platform, we attract diverse telephone mystery shoppers from across the U.S., each presenting a unique scenario. This variety of shoppers allows us to ensure that every telephone mystery shop is unique and realistic, making it difficult for employees to distinguish between shoppers and regular customers.

Each telephone mystery shopper’s diverse voice and background significantly impact our evaluations. Many of these shoppers come from different states, which mirrors real-life situations. For instance, one of our employees recently had a brother-in-law who lived in Georgia.  When he moved to Colorado for a new job, he needed storage for his belongings. Although he eventually quit that job and returned home, the need for storage was present. We encourage our telephone shoppers to draw on real-life experiences like this when speaking with the self-storage managers we train. This approach leads to more organic and natural conversations than if we provided them with scripted dialogue.

All Stages of Life Encouraged

We also have older individuals participating, allowing us to connect with shoppers of diverse skill sets.  ISecretShop.com is also user-friendly enough to allow us to utilize tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy telephone mystery shoppers.  When listening to older voices, we notice they seem to receive more patience from managers on the phone. In our experience, calls with older customers often last longer than average. We emphasize this in our training: when talking to slower speakers or older individuals, it’s crucial to speak slowly and repeat information as needed.  So, it’s nice to see that training is in effect with the managers who use our phone shopping program.

Also, many older veterans use ISecretShop.com for a bit of extra income and end up doing phone shopping.  We don’t typically prompt our shoppers to inquire about military discounts. Recently, in a telephone mystery shop, an older veteran asked the manager if any discounts were available for them. We must be aware that we don’t discourage our shoppers from asking about those discounts, so we get to hear how the managers run with that opportunity to sell a significant feature of the self-storage property.

Variety is the Spice of …SkilCheck!

We are thrilled by the variety of scenarios we encounter, which makes the ISecretShop.com platform an excellent fit for accommodating different types of shoppers and meeting the unique needs of our customers. We embrace individuals of all ages, accents, languages, and backgrounds. Our telephone mystery shopping training program is designed to be positive, beneficial, and inclusive, and it is something that managers are eager to participate in.

Our goal is to ensure that all phone shops are fair and diverse. We provide managers with tailored and effective training, moving beyond cookie-cutter approaches and obvious solutions. After spending years in the self-storage industry, we have incorporated our customers’ feedback to develop an exceptional training tool for self-storage managers.

If you are a mystery shopper and have come across this blog, you can sign up to shop with us. 

Visit ISecretShop.com to become a shopper today!