1. Print out and read your report details well before you visit.

A lot of mystery shoppers will do their assignments out of office hours, so make sure you give yourself time to phone up and ask any questions before your assignment and report is due. This reduces the risk of having to repeat your visit, or submitting poor reports.

2. Type up your reports as soon as you can.

Handwrite notes against your report questions immediately after your trip, and type up at your first opportunity. If you leave your report until the last minute, you may forget important details.

3. Use leading questions to get the information you need.

This will vary depending on the assignment, but giving examples of what you might need the product or service for - relating to your present, past or a friend’s situation can often help. For example “I’ve just moved house, and was wondering what broadband options were available in my area”.

When you’re given a mystery shopping assignment, you’ll usually be given some leading questions that may help if your struggling to get your advisor to volunteer the information you need. We’re also generating a list of useful questions on the blog to help you, and we’d love to hear some of your examples. Just add your comments below.

4. If you’ve been hovering and no-one has approached you, approach them discreetly.

Try to be as natural as you can - because if your victim suspects they are being mystery shopped they will perform differently and your results will be skewed. Asking for the time, directions, or smiling and saying hello may be all you need to strike up a conversation.

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I was running a communication training course last week and interestingly, the e mails section is always a firm favourite with the delegates. Email is a useful tool but can lead to misunderstandings and you need to remember that e-mails can be surprisingly permanent. Here are a couple of things which may be useful:

• Words make up only a small part of the communication process. With e-mail, we don’t have the luxury of being able to analyse the meaning of the words by tone of voice or the body language being used, so it’s very easy for the content of e-mail to be misunderstood. It’s a good idea to read e-mails over a few of times before sending.
• We often respond quickly to emails without really thinking about our response and its effects. It’s a good idea, especially where emotions are involved, to write your response, wait a while, and then re read before sending, this way you have a chance to respond in a calm and rational way rather than create the wrong impression or make things worse.
• Punctuation is vital to making messages clear and readily understood. All professional e-mails should be properly punctuated and spelling checked.
• It’s good to recognise when email is appropriate or when it would be better to pick up the phone or walk over to talk to someone.

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There are many companies who offering specialised training to call centres throughout the UK but very few of these will carry out any research before starting a job. Beyond The Box was commissioned by the Co-operative Bank to identify the training needs and requirements of 100 inbound telephone sales staff. The overall objective of this exercise was to deliver increased levels of sales and customer service by providing the right training course for the right staff.Christine Knott, Director of Beyond The Box, undertook extensive research in order to meet this objective. The purpose of the research was to establish whether the department had a suitable foundation on which it could reach its desired goals. This included looking at whether the current method and times of training delivery was suitable and gauging the response of the advisors towards the training they received.

“It is vital when designing bespoke training courses for companies to ascertain what the current level of understanding is at all levels within the company. If individual objectives have been set then these need to be compared with the overall objective of the training. To do a training job properly you have to get under the skin of an organisation and understand how it works so that the course that you design will actually work from the ground level up,” said Christine.

The research used several methods including interviewing staff at all levels including those in the front line, dealing with the calls, through to staff at managerial level. Beyond The Box also prepared an analysis of current call standards and attended team meetings to assess communication levels within the department.

The Co-operative Bank also had objectives for each member of staff and Beyond The Box looked into all of these objectives and how these linked into the departments’ overall objectives.

The results of the research indicated that certain measures needed to be taken before any training delivery would be beneficial. Julie Marsh, Customer Service Manager at the Co-operative Bank comments, “Following Christine’s recommendations and guidance, we have carried out some extensive groundwork and any training delivered will be far more successful as a result.

“The research undertaken by Beyond The Box was, in my experience, far more detailed than any other company I have worked with and it exceeded my expectations. More importantly it was undertaken in a professional and non- threatening manner. Positive feedback about Christine’s approach and style were made by all members of staff who came into contact with her. It is refreshing to see a forward thinking company who are keen to see real results rather than just delivering empty training solutions for financial gain.”

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I delivered a communications skills training course recently with one of our clients, and it went very well. Communication is cited as being a key issue in the work place.

We have all heard the comment ‘no one tells us anything’, so the ideas we included in the programme were received very positively. Delegates said that their new communication skills would be highly beneficial, not only in the workplace but in social environments too.

They were keen to put them straight into practice and see how they could change things. They were really confident that they were now in a position to improve communication within their teams and remove the negativity that poor communication can create.

The client was delighted with the feedback comments and the scores. Various sections appear on the score sheet including course and trainer evaluation. All are scored out of a maximum of 5. I suppose I should be delighted because I scored all 5’s across the board with the exception of three 4’s. Being the competitive person I am though, those three 4’s have bugged me!

I’m looking forward to the training that we have booked with the same client next month and I will be aiming for 5’s across the board on the feedback!

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