Do you ever wonder about the best way to employ telephone mystery shopping? Should a call center place the calls, or should a variety of callers phone your locations?  Companies who use traditional call centers to conduct telephone mystery shops may feel that quicker results and smaller fees prevail.  Before you consider this strategy, think about the following pitfalls:

1. Calls across the Board:  Call center employees may make dozens of calls each day to many locations. When employees place many calls over a short time period, they may begin to sound scripted. The calls sometimes sound just like call center calls. With telephone mystery shops, independently contracted mystery shoppers, with experience perhaps in a variety of industries, place the calls.  Because shoppers apply for assignments which interest them, they more naturally pose as customers interested in your service.  
2. Quality Means More Control over your Time:  Does the call center review each shop to make sure that it was conducted correctly and that the caller asked the required questions and listened for the required elements?  If not, consider a company that provides telephone shops followed by a review for quality before you even see the result.   The reviewer excludes any poor quality shops, saving clients the time of weeding through calls that they shouldn’t count as valid results for their program.  Better yet, a good firm will discard the low quality result and replace it with another telephone shop, at its own expense.
3. Mystery shopping Know How and Reliability:  Are call center associates experienced with mystery shopping or do they usually handle calls for actual customers?  Mystery shopping companies train independently contracted mystery shoppers in a variety of ways, specific to each project.  The shopper completes an online survey, which contains checks and balances to make sure that the shopper reports accurately on the call.  Depending on the center, some call center employees may receive more training on what to say; while mystery shoppers are especially trained on what to observe and listen for.
4. Keep It Local:Telephone mystery shoppers originate individual calls from an area local to each office.  Call center calls may originate all calls from a central location. With local calls, the calls will sound more natural to the area, and more convincing to the associate who answers the phone. With these advantages in mind, consider a provider who can offer solid mystery shopper coverage.  Your company will receive objective results and valuable information about your locations over time.

For more about telephone mystery shopping, see our prior pos: Five Ideas to Energize Your Telephone Mystery Shopping Program