Secret Shop Your Business

Caleb Agee 0:00
You need to kind of pause and say, I’m a new customer. I’ve never been here before. Take a big breath, and then you walk in and, like, look around, feel that experience for the first time. What are you seeing? What are you smelling? What are you hearing?

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m Caleb Agee, and I’m joined by our senior strategist here at Frank and Maven. Leslie Clark, welcome. We don’t have Brandon in in the shop today, so we’re holding down the fort. We’re gonna make it happen. This is the place where we help you eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. And there’s an old saying it goes like this, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. And that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today. We’re taking a fresh look at the impression that your company is leaving on your clients and customers, and we’re calling this episode Secret Shop, your business. Yeah, it’s

Leslie Clark 0:58
so important to get a fresh perspective and a fresh set of eyes. You just always want to leave your customers with the best first impression that you that you possibly can. So we’ve got five different ways to break down how to secret shop, what’s going on inside your walls? Yeah,

Caleb Agee 1:11
100% it’s, I think it was Tim miles that said that every interaction with your business, like the sights, the sounds, the smells, he was like hitting every one of the senses. I probably missed some feelings. Can you have feelings with the textures? Yeah, with the business, every single interaction with that is affecting your brand. I think people think about brands as colors and logos and things like that. No, the brand is what they recall when they think

Speaker 1 1:39
of you, the smiles they see, when the when they walk in the doors, the junk piled in the corners, the tone of voice that’s used when they’re greeted, how quickly everyone moves, the smells, the wardrobe. It’s what they see, what they smell, what they hear, what they feel. Yeah.

Caleb Agee 1:52
How, how do your trucks look when they pull up in your in their driveway? What are your What are your bathrooms like? Yeah. So

Speaker 1 1:58
we’re gonna challenge you today to take a look at things that can easily be ignored, and make a list of the things that you can do about it.

Caleb Agee 2:04
Yeah, so this doesn’t have to be a big production. We’re calling it secret shop, your business. But I think everybody thinks about like, oh, I have to pay, like, 1000s of dollars for some third party company to hire people on my behalf, and I my team won’t even know about it. You could do that, but that’s not what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about doing this maybe on a little bit of a lower, lower scale, but you will get, I think, just as effective, if not more effective, feedback for your company. So step number one, if you haven’t done this before, you really, really, really should do it. It’s map your customer flow. So typically, you want to think about from beginning to end, what you’re like, what process your customer would come through to become a customer to go to through the sale. Give us an example. What

Speaker 1 2:51
that customer flow might look like is they see you on TV or they hear you on the radio, and from there, they’re interested in your service. So they they search you on Google. When they search you on Google, they click on your website, and when they’re on your website, they might submit a form, and when they submit a form, you call them back. So what they hear on the phone whenever they call you back, that’s

Caleb Agee 3:11
right, yeah, yeah. And then you have to set an appointment, usually, yeah, right. And then the next part of the process, we’re stepping into the sales part, right? It kind of depends on your business. Yeah. Are you going to them? Are they coming to you? What’s that experience like? If they’re going to them, what’s their what’s a truck look like? What’s the installer dress like? Yeah, or what’s the salesman, or woman is dressed like, vice versa. What

Speaker 1 3:34
do they see when they walk into your lobby? Or, yeah,

Caleb Agee 3:37
yeah. So we’re thinking about this process, and then even after, you know, then you, after you sell them, you still have to perform the service. Yeah, right. So we have an install, we have, we have, maybe your it’s delivery day, you sold them a car, or you have give them a haircut, like they have the actual service happening, and then post service. Do you send any, what we would call yesterday, customer correspondence, text or email. Do you follow up with them? Yeah. And the last, the most lasting impression, is the thing you actually gave them, right the car they drive around for the next two years. Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 4:13
So just take a second and map out what that customer flow looks like for you.

Caleb Agee 4:17
Yeah, you could do that on paper right now. Just grab a pen, flip over a sheet of paper in your notebook. One, where’s the first place they might see us print piece, you know? And then. Two, website. Three, yours is probably gonna sound very similar to what we just did, yeah. So that leads us to step number two. So step

Speaker 1 4:35
number two, it all starts with you. Since you’re listening to this episode, we’re putting the first responsibility on you. It doesn’t matter what your position is in the company. You’ll see things, and you can affect them if, if you really want to.

Caleb Agee 4:47
Yeah, so we’re going to, I’m putting this air quotes, if you’re just listening to audio, we’re going to shop the company in this way because you really can’t, you know, do the undercover boss thing when you don’t have. Have 1000 employees. Do you remember that? Yeah? That shows, that show, yeah, that show, they got the

Speaker 1 5:05
new hair and the new, yeah, new nose and yeah, wardrobe. You

Caleb Agee 5:09
probably won’t be able to pull that off, but if you do, you should record it and tag us somehow and let us know that you did that, because that would be amazing. But we’re going to just take a look at some of the things that you can look at with fresh eyes. And the way, the way I usually, I actually personally do this for our company. I’ll, like, stop myself before I walk in the door. Or, like, when I’m coming around our parking lot, you have to kind of go in a loop around our building. I come around and, like, as I get out of my car, like, think about how’s it look what’s it look like in the parking lot? Or walk in the door and pause and say, like, Okay, I’m a customer. And because normally you’ll just kind of barrel in the door, walk to your office, hey everybody, and you’re kind of desk and start your day, you’re getting to work, yeah, you need to kind of pause and say, I’m a new customer. I’ve never been here before. Take a big breath, and then you walk in and, like, look around, feel that experience for the first time. What are you seeing? What are you smelling? What are you hearing?

Speaker 1 6:07
Who’s talking to you first? What kind of mood are they in? How are they they presenting? What are you smelling? Yeah, junk piled up. What state is the office in? Yeah,

Caleb Agee 6:16
yeah, it’s good. And like, walk yourself, if you have a larger office, walk yourself to where the customer goes. Like, here it’s a conference room. Yeah, what’s the conference room look like when I get in there? How does that? How does all that feel? And I think it’s really, it’s really important. You’re going to want to get, like, a note on your phone. You’re going to call it secret shop, and you’re going to start just jot down things you notice. If you have an easy solution for it, that’s fine. We’re gonna talk about how to arrive at the solutions later, but I think it’s important to just jot down your thoughts. What are you noticing you could also do the same thing on your website, right? Yeah. I think it’s good to think about what happened to that person that day that they ended up on your website that day.

Speaker 1 6:59
What questions are they asking? What hardships did they run into that day? What made them willing to take that action and come find you today? Yeah,

Caleb Agee 7:06
yeah. So again, we’re gonna do some breathing exercises. You’re gonna type in your URL to don’t hit enter yet. Close your eyes. I found a leak in my roof today. Enter, and then what do you see? That’s the first

Speaker 1 7:21
thing you’re seeing. What do you notice? Noticing? Yeah, if you, if you meet them on your website, addressing that leaky roof, first thing you’ve automatically, yeah, won them over to solve their problem exactly.

Caleb Agee 7:30
Um, some other practical things. And I realize you may not be the boss we we said it doesn’t matter. You’re gonna at least observe these things. We’re not gonna necessarily solve them yet. We’re just observing. We’re tracking them down because there’s, there’s two steps of a observation we’re gonna try to do here. So take a look at your trucks. Make sure. Like, if you have a fleet, make sure they look good. They look clean. If you have installers that are third party, like, what does that look like? What does your team look like when they if you have salespeople that drive around, what kind of what do their cars look like? Yeah, they pull in the parking lot. When people walk by and look in the seat, what’s that look like? Pay attention to where your team parks in your parking lot. Yeah, you leave room for your clients to park in the front row.

Unknown Speaker 8:11
That one’s so important.

Caleb Agee 8:13
I think, I think you can tell a lot about a person and an organization based on where they park. Lastly,

Speaker 1 8:19
I think wardrobe is such a big deal to what impression are you giving from the minute you walk in the door? Does your company? Does your team have uniforms? Did they? Do they all look presentable? Or are there wrinkles present, just kind of how you’re showing up? Yeah, to your customers in the world. Yeah. If

Caleb Agee 8:35
you have, like, I’m wearing a frank and Maven shirt, so older one, but if you have like, swagger, like polos or uniforms,

Speaker 1 8:42
just unifies your team immediately. Yeah, that

Caleb Agee 8:45
may not be, that’s not what we do here at Frank Maven, right? But like, that may be what you do at your place, and it may help, especially by like, a service company, where everybody kind of needs to look like they’re on a team. I think that’s solid, but make sure they all look good, right? And then we’re gonna move on to step three, which is call

Speaker 1 9:03
in fresh eyes and you’ve taken a look. And the reality is that you can only remove yourself so far from your own company. You see it every single day. This is the world that you live in and the environment that you’re exposed to every single day you show up. But someone with a fresh set of eyes doesn’t have that first impression that you’re that you’ve grown normal to Yeah, so call in, call in a fresh party. Here, even when you’re making an extra effort, you won’t see everything. And this doesn’t have to be something big or fancy where you hire some third party. Call in a friend, maybe, maybe pay them to pay them a couple dollars to go in, buy them a gift card, toss them a 50 something like that, and ask them to just walk through your doors and experience your service. Yeah, like a brand new customer, it

Caleb Agee 9:50
kind of depends on what you’re doing or selling, but you could even give them, like, a free product sample, right? Like I gave the example of haircuts, right? Give them a free haircut or. You know, but I think it is important to pay them for their time, because they’ll take it seriously. Yeah, they’ll do it. They’ll do it well. The one other caveat I’ll give is, like, if you have, like, a large ticket item, you it’s, it’s probably hard to sell a roof to a secret shopper. Yeah, you know, I’m saying because you’re going all the way through that process, and they won’t even down to the install, they won’t make it to the end of

Speaker 1 10:23
your process. At the bare minimum, have them take a peek at your website, have them up on the phone and try to schedule, schedule a

Caleb Agee 10:29
review. Well, I was gonna say even you may have a buddy who will be or like, if you’re still in a car or something like that. You might have a buddy who’s like, hey, it’s time for me to buy a new car. You could forego that sale and say, hey, I want you to do me a favor. Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna give you 50 bucks take your wife out to dinner. I’d like for you to call back at the front office and or I want you to come to the car lot. I want you to start walking around, walk through and express your interest. Write down like, make sure you take some notes. Tell me what it’s like, and you want them to, I think it’s important to have them gather both good things and not so good things that they notice. Yeah.

Speaker 1 11:07
And the same way that you started your note, you might preface and ask them to write a note as well. Have them, have them write down their thoughts and go through that same process and keep that detailed note to pass back to you. Yeah.

Caleb Agee 11:18
I think, I think it’s important, yeah, just, just have them write write it all down. If they have ideas, I think it’d be great to hear what their ideas are, but I think, I think it’s good just, if they’re an introvert, I’m guessing they’re going to want to write it all down. They’re an extrovert. Don’t make them write it down. Call them right? Say Hey, call me when you’re done. Have them call you, and then you write it down for right? Yeah, I think it’s good. Just That’s good advice. Help your friends out. Do a favor if they like. Yeah, they did you a favor. Asking an extrovert to write you an email is that’s fair is maybe torture for them. So add that all to your big list. You’ve got a big list of observations now, because you’ve done some and your secret shopper has done some, next we’re going to make a hit list. And what I hesitate to do, the dangerous thing to do in this is a boss could start secret shopping, could put on fresh eyes and start noticing things around their office, and just barrel through the office like Meryl Streep and devil. Devil Wears like, you know, saying, count, stick, you know, and just start like, Thing, Thing, Thing. But the danger of that is like, you’ll get quick results with that. I’m talking to you managers and and leaders. You’ll get quick results with the like, get that, do that, get that, but you will not get lasting results with that. You really want

Speaker 1 12:43
your team to get involved and be bought into this process, so it’s deep and lasting change and not just a quick cleanup. Yes, the fast things that you notice. And

Caleb Agee 12:51
so how do we get them invested? What we’re going to do, you’re gonna call a meeting. You’re gonna bring in two or three interested parties, right? If it’s about maybe your front of Office experience, call whoever your front of office person is into this meeting. If it’s about your sales experience, call a salesperson or multiple sales people in. If it’s about your install, call them it right? We’re gonna just bring in maybe a few parties, and we’re going to list your notes, of your observations. Tell them what you’ve been up to. Yes. Say, say, Hey, I’ve been secret shopping. I had somebody else Secret Shop. Here’s what we’ve noticed. And what I would encourage you to do is not give the answers to all these problems right away. So you are giving the symptom, but not the solution, not the prescription. And so you’re gonna say, Hey, I noticed that the front of the office feels kind of cluttered and cramped when I walk in or when I go to our website,

Unknown Speaker 13:51
I’m left with questions. Yeah, it

Caleb Agee 13:53
doesn’t answer. It doesn’t really tell me what’s gonna happen to me next, or it doesn’t, you know, lead me. It doesn’t quickly show me where to go. And so what you want to do is you want to take those observations and then say, What should we do about it? Guys, have your team build the answer with you together, and I promise you they will. They’ll come up with, probably, ideas that are different and better than yours. Like, be open. There’s a brainstorm. The no bad ideas. Come up with crazy ones, the ridiculously expensive ones. Don’t care, right? Don’t be afraid. It’s okay. We’re gonna write them all down. That

Speaker 1 14:29
brings us to point number five, yeah, prioritize and attack it together. Maybe start with the low hanging fruit, the really easy things to do something about, fast and make them. Make them 90 day. Rocks. Make them 90 day. We call them rocks, but it’s 90 day goals or objectives, and put them in a realistic order to attack and take care of together.

Caleb Agee 14:46
Yeah. So I think when your team has that list, the other thing is, like, give it. You probably shouldn’t be responsible for all three of your you know your list, your rocks, right? If we’re calling rocks. Thanks. What you want to do is, like, assign an individual, maybe one for each of them, or maybe you just have one this quarter, yeah, give that to one person. Say, Hey, you’re in charge of that. Here’s the resources. You have authority to pull this off, knock it out, yeah, and watch them. Watch them run with it. If they’re a motivated person, they’ll probably get it done in faster than 90 days. Depends on what it is, right? But then you kind of want to keep that list running and come back and say, Okay, next one is going to be a little harder. Maybe it’s going to take us two quarters. How do we break that in half? Or the next one’s a strain on the budget, like we’re going to have to redecorate, yeah, to buy a new couch. That’s a big that’s a big expense. Well, let’s, let’s save up for it. Let’s make a plan in the budget that we’re going to do that so you’re going to keep coming back. So that is secret shopping your business. We’re going to you’re going to start by mapping your customers flow. How do they come to do business with you? And what’s the process from beginning to end? Start the first impression to the very last one. And what do they see along the way? You’re going to take it upon yourself to do it first, right? And I think you need to look at it yourself with fresh eyes. Close your eyes. Take that big breath. Everybody. Be like, what is Leslie doing on the way into work today?

Unknown Speaker 16:18
And like, it’s your first day.

Caleb Agee 16:20
What is she doing today? She’s secret shopping. That’s what she’s doing. And then three you’re gonna call in some fresh eyes. If you’re not the boss, you may not have the power to swing like a $50 gift card around or something like that. But if you and if you aren’t, I would encourage you show them this episode. Go talk about doing it.

Speaker 1 16:40
And then it’s kind of fun to play secret undercover spy sometimes. Well,

Caleb Agee 16:44
we’ve also done that for our clients in the past. Sometimes, one of us will have, you kind of have to have at least a reasonable need for what they’re selling, right? You can’t, I don’t know, like, you probably wouldn’t go to a barber shop, or I wouldn’t. I don’t know there has to be, like, at least a reasonable need. But I think it’s, it’s a lot of fun. You’ve done this actually

Speaker 1 17:05
today? Yeah, I had an experience today kind of a, kind of a fun one. I actually got to get a facial today on behalf of one of my clients. And it was really fun to just break that experience down and provide my feedback on, yeah, what I noticed, what I enjoyed, what I saw room for improvement on, yeah,

Caleb Agee 17:20
it’s, it’s so much fun. So calling those fresh eyes, call your marketing people, call your friends, whoever that is that you trust to give you honest feedback. You don’t want, like a Negative Nelly coming in and just picking your part. That’s not going to be helpful or constructive, but you want somebody who’s gonna be like, hey, it was, it was pretty good. Here’s what I’m seeing. Yeah, here’s what I’m noticing. They’re not gonna be nasty about it, and then make that hit list, prioritize and attack. If you enjoyed this, I would encourage you hit the subscribe button, rate and review. Give us a thumbs up, five stars, whatever that looks like, depending on the platform you’re on. If you have a specific question that you need answered for marketing, you can send that into Maven Monday at Frank and maven.com We’ll be here every Monday answering your marketing and advertising questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why

Leslie Clark 18:13
are just a fancy lie. See you next time.