As Coach Vince Lombardi said, “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit.”
In order to enjoy long-term success in the business world, one of those habits needs to be constant self-improvement, especially in customer service. Customer service is king, and that’s no surprise to any business paying attention. Training employees is critical.
But customer service training isn’t something you can just do once during orientation and then never address again—it should be a training program that never ends. Just like the chef who sharpens his knives every day, so it must be with your business and your staff. But you can’t just ask your employees if they think they’re doing a great job with customer service. It’s not even a question of honesty; the fact is that people aren’t good at self-appraisal. And perhaps worst of all, people behave differently if they know they’re being observed.
The biggest reason secret shoppers can benefit you is that they are invisible pop quizzes for your staff. They’re regular people, just like any of your customers. But unlike the useful (but blunt) tools that satisfaction surveys are, secret shoppers are precision instruments that can focus on your most important initiatives, like customer service. Make no mistake: secret shoppers aren’t there to trap your employees and make them look bad. When secret shoppers uncover a deficiency, that shouldn’t be seen as an employee failure but rather an opportunity to train him or her and to strengthen your business overall.
Secret shoppers will show you where your business is strongest—and also where it needs the most work. In short, secret shoppers will make your business smarter and stronger, and it’ll instill the kinds of habits your staff needs to keep winning every day.
Just like in sports, a coach’s job doesn’t end in training camp. Coaching happens game-in and game-out without fail. To find out how to use secret shopping to keep your team winning all year long, reach out to us at The Brandt Group today.
