Courtesy of one of our Facebook friends:

• At Walgreens just now, the clerk asked me, while staring at my belly with a look of complete terror on her face, "When is THAT due?" My mouth said something polite, but in my head I wanted to strangle her.

Did this employee want to enrage a customer? Of course not.

But until we identify moments like this and help the employee understand the impacts of her every word, mistakes like this will continue.

Mystery shopping isn't about punishing employees or getting them in trouble. It's about giving them real-world feedback that helps them improve their service.

The Friday before the July 4^th weekend might be a time to coast for some people.

Not us.

At 12:30pm last Friday, a retail client called. They were having a big 4^th of July promotion and wanted to know how well sales reps at the distribution locations were representing their products and promoting their specials.

They needed our research, and they needed it immediately.

We sprung.

• Scenarios were scripted.
• Questions were crafted.
• Locations were identified.
• Evaluators were recruited.

Within hours we had an entirely new project up and rolling.

Saturday and Sunday, the evaluations occurred. Monday, we created & delivered the in-depth summary report to the client.

How’s that for a rapid response team? From a blank slate on Friday to a completed project by Monday. Oh, yes we did!

Sure, you don’t want every day to be that intense.

But pulling off the impossible gives us the professional thrill that you can’t get with regularly scheduled programming. So we really appreciated the chance to test & prove ourselves. 

On Tuesday, the happy client called to request more research.

And that’s why we do what we do.

Our parent company, The Magnetic Group, just posted a great new discussion about tellers and their profound ability to impact perceptions of their bank and land more prospective customers.

The main point is this:

• When people walk into a bank, they might be asking for information, but what they really want is a relationship.

Tellers who simply sling brochures at prospects are flagrantly wasting incredible opportunities to land new business for their bank.

And we’d like to point out that these training insights are based exclusively from the data collected by Marketing Endeavors’ top-notch mystery shopping services.

Go read the whole piece.



[Editor's note: During family trips to the beach, we would always go to a fabulous restaurant called Louisiana Lagniappe.  Because of this, I learned at an early age the meaning of (and importance of) lagniappe, a little something extra. A recent post on our parent site, The Magnetic Group, gives an example of just that. -jz]

The desk associate at the Louisville Science Center could have just handed us our IMAX tickets and said, “Have a nice day.”

He could have ignored the fact that the movie was seconds from starting and that we were 3 floors away from the entrance.

He could have thought, “It’s not my problem they’re running late.”

He could have done the bare minimum (just hand us our tickets), and went about his day.

Instead, he proactively called a co-worker at the IMAX theater and informed her that there were two more viewers on their way up. He even called us “guests.”

He never told us he was doing this. If I hadn’t overheard his conversation, I never even would have known.

He just did it.

When you start going above and beyond out of habit, you know you’re offering outstanding customer service, and it's clear that this organization has created a culture dedicated to making customers smile.



As seasoned mystery shoppers know all too well, our industry is rife with impersonal behavior and poor attitudes.

We work hard to buck that trend and create positive relationships, believing that it creates better research.

Some companies really think that they can be rude to shoppers and still count on them to demonstrate a strong work ethic and provide insightful information.

But as we all know, what you give is what you get.

So we treat our shoppers with respect and good will, and that's what they give us in return.

When we get emails like this from our shoppers, we know we're doing it right:

"Aaron and Ryan both are such a pleasure. I called Aaron's cell phone last night on a whim to see if a particular shop might be available. It was after hours, but he still offered to check for me.  Lo-and-behold, it looked like the assignment was available. He called Ryan to confirm, then assigned it to me. (Apparently, someone else had flaked earlier in the day.)

Thank you, and great work!"

 Thank YOU for sharing, and for shopping with ME.