Nothing beats seeing your product or service through the customer’s eyes. Secret Shopping, when done well, provides invaluable insight into the effectiveness of training and sales programs. What’s more, when you assume the role of shopper, you can experience first-hand how associates present themselves and relate to customers. Secret Shopping can illustrate the difference between what sells, what doesn’t, and why. It can shed light on returns, attachment, advertising effectiveness, and market share.
While Associates Interactive provides Secret Shopping services for clients, we prefer to secret shop with them. Let’s face it: so much of the shopping experience is subjective – the emotional reaction that a shopper has to an associate’s statements or mannerisms can determine both their perception about the value of the shopping experience and whether or not they eventually make the purchase. Reading a report about Secret Shopping is certainly informative, but doing it is a much more effective way to size up the shopping environment. Our guided Secret Shopper tours highlight the necessary essentials for you to benefit most from the secret shopping experience.
Secret Shopping is not limited as a valuable tool for retailers only. Manufacturers and merchandisers use targeted Secret Shopping to understand “why” – for instance, why a product sells or doesn’t, or why it gets returned or doesn’t. Secret Shopping helps them discover the conditions that create great sales results and motivates them to ensure that such conditions are improved and maximized.
