With the country now officially recognized as being in a recession since December of last year, businesses are scrambling to adapt. Many are simply trying to hang on, abandoning, at least for now, visions of increased market share. Thus it perhaps should come as no surprise employees who deal with the public over the phone have become more aggressive, says Kurt Adams, Senior Accounts Director of Advanced Feedback, a leading provider of telephone monitoring services. “It used to be we were asked to measure items that tended to make the customer feel warm and fuzzy, such as using their name. Now it seems the sole focus is how many times we get asked for our business”, commented Mr. Adams.

A long time provider of telephone and onsite mystery shopping, Advanced Feedback now provides both services in Canada. "Our presence in Canada was first established when we started using French speaking Canadians to meet the needs of one of our multi-national clients", says Zachary Hooker, President of Advanced Feedback. Inc. "For most secret shopping programs to be successful it is important to recruit and train shoppers that reflect the clients target market – even regional dialects can be a tip-off if the business typically caters to their immediate locale."

During their first few years supporting Canadian businesses with secret telephone shops, Advanced Feedback made all calls from their San Diego location. As the volume increased the mystery shopping firm established a system to use local Canadians, routing the recorded phone shops through their in-house servers. "Our clients use Advanced Feedback's recorded phone shops, Feedback-24 alerts, phone skills tips, and monthly performance trend reports to monitor and train telephone agents. In these times of economic uncertainty it is absolutely essential to turn all inbound calls into appointments, reservations, or sales. You simply can't afford to lose a lead due to poor phone skills" proclaims Zachary.

Advanced Feedback conducts mystery shopping programs in all states, Mexico, and Canada. For more information visit www.AdvancedFeedback.com

Advanced Feedback, Inc. has extended their mystery shopping services to their local neighborhood Humane Society, who was originally concerned that the mystery shopping company was too big for the single location.  As stated by Nicole Campos, Customer Relations Manager, “I appreciate all of your help while we develop a program that best suits us and within what your company can do.  I realize that it is a little different than what you normally do considering the nature of our business and that we only have one location.”  After working closely with her dedicated Account Manager, the two companies were able to tailor a program to fit Nicole’s exact needs. The San Diego based company now conducts both weekly phone shops and a monthly onsite mystery shop offering valuable feedback in a timely manner.

Phone shops are placed to help make sure that each incoming call is forwarded to the correct department is important.  Phone shops help get pet related questions answered correctly while capturing the quality and level of the customer service by targeting each of the Humane Societies eight departments.  These calls range in a number of different scenarios and are valuable to Nicole due to the frequency of the calls, which are delivered to her by email including the recording and a detailed survey within 24 hours. These phone shops help keep the employees on their toes and provide the required level of customer service to all guests, both two legged and four.

The onsite mystery shop conducted each month not only targets a specific department but also the main facilities.  With a full summary of the details, along with an easy to understand scorecard, the information allows Nicole to visualize from the customer’s point of view.

When asked about the program after six months of use, Nicole stated, “We are very happy with the shop results and are finally able to really use a lot of the data we have collected for training and new hires.”  At www.advancedfeedback.com you can learn how this mystery shopping firm is able to customize and tailor their services to fit your needs.

Advanced Feedback, Inc. is proud to Advanced Feedback, Inc. is proud to welcome the Beach House. Originally signed in 2004, the mystery shopping firm previously conducted monthly phone shops at the Hermosa Beach property. Due to reconstructing of management, the Beach House reestablished their phone shop service under the new management of Jerry Cronk.

The hotel relies on phone shops to monitor each agent’s customer service skills. Mystery shoppers pose as potential customers and call inquiring rates and availability. Agents are scored based on a number of criteria, such as qualification, reservation offers, aggressive closing, building rapport and value, friendliness and helpfulness. Linda Tran, Account Administrator of Advanced Feedback states, “In this day and age, many businesses are relying on phone shops and mystery shoppers to be their eyes and ears on their employees. Phone shops are made to see how the agents perform when they think that they are in the clear. It also helps business owners obtain the initial impressions of their guests.”

On a daily basis, Advanced Feedback provides immediate results to the Beach House, these results include the agent’s individual phone shop report and recorded call. This immediate feedback allows for correct training and counsel to take place if needed.

For more information regarding mystery shops or phone shops to enhance your level of guest service, please visit AdvancedFeedback.com

While domestic businesses have long used mystery shopping to measure and improve sales and service efforts, a growing number of international businesses are starting to use U.S.-based mystery shopping companies to test their foreign sales and service.

Mystery shopping has been used to enhance customer engagement initiatives in most service industries, such as Hospitality, Retail, Automotive, and Financial Services for a very long time now. Is the Healthcare community finally embracing the benefits of this vital service and sales improvement tool as well? The answer appears to be yes.

Healthcare has traditionally limited itself to long-term approaches such as customer surveys or physician surveys. However, due to the competitive nature of today's technologically savvy and demanding "shopper", it seems the industry as a whole has woken to more aggressive techniques for fast acting monitoring and feedback such as mystery shopping.

Zachary Hooker, President of San Diego based Advanced Feedback, a leader in mystery shopping says, "Though we have been servicing almost all areas of the service industry for more than a decade now, this is the first time we have seen some activity on the Healthcare front. It looks to be pretty promising and long term."

"Mystery shoppers" posing as patients evaluate the facility by placing appointment calls, information calls for pricing, visiting the facility, faking symptoms, making special requests and sometimes staying in the facility overnight. The medical centers and facilities who have undertaken the services lately, believe that a number of changes have been made as a result of the practice including improvement in employee behavior, change in ambience of waiting room and reception areas, more concern towards patient privacy and lesser wait times.

While like most other research techniques, mystery shopping gives insights into ways to improve patient interaction, identifies problems in service, and increases customer loyalty, one of its most effective uses is the aid it provides in explanation of customer survey results, that is, its ability to explain the customer feedback or response.

The "Mystery Shopping" approach seems to be particularly popular amongst mid size and small size segment of the industry. This is possibly due to the stiff competition and evaluation the smaller clinics and nursing homes face. Larger organizations also benefit from the service by using mystery shoppers from within their patient database, as well as those out-of-plan. Certainly, the fast turn around time, immediate results and comparatively lower cost of service makes it an attractive feedback and training tool.

"The foray of Healthcare into the Mystery Shopping arena is a welcome move and we look forward to the customer service initiatives it will promote in the sector." Comments Zachary Hooker from Advanced Feedback.

Advanced Feedback has over 15 years of experience in doing mystery shopping and customer engagement surveys. For more information, please visit www.advancedfeedback.com or write to Zhooker@advancedfeedback.com.