Mystery Shopper Trap

A friend was telling me about his sales benchmarking sideline.  He offers clients a full competitive audit of their sales process, right through from initial enquiry to cancellation/returns.  He’d recently conducted some work in the vaguely entitled ‘virtual assistant’ space.

16 firms were contacted.  Just 5 emailed a response.  And only 1 gave him a phone call.

You’ve gotta say, on any measure, that’s shocking.  And then it got worse.  He was after telephone chats to check whether promises matched reality.  Everyone tried to avoid a real-life conversation, instead telling him to download from the website.  And when he did get a couple of people on the line, he deliberately said he was busy and suggested them to call back.

The time he chose was 8am the next morning.  Again, only one person tried to reach him at the allotted hour.

How does your enquiry handling machine stack up?