That time I was mystery shopped

Back in the day I worked for a large "big box"/name brand retailer who employed salespeople rather than mindless automatons of whom your presence in the store would be disturbing. 

I was the floor manager for our particular franchisee, so I dealt with a lot of things. Stock ordering, dealing with the idiocy of forced centralised ordering running concurrently with store ordering what we could actually sell, sales staff moaning endlessly about who stole whose sale  (usually the less experienced sales guys who were floundering with potentially great sales would find themselves being over taken by the guys who could actually close), the ACCC endlessly calling trying to trip up sales staff into trying a "bait and switch"  or trying to get them to discriminate on price between cash and interest free (the later of which burned a huge hole in the profit margin - and therefore commissions - and the administration of which was inordinately time consuming), the over entitled types who'd threaten me with consumer affairs every time they didn't get what they wanted (myself and the local branch manager were on each others speed dial and we had a great working relationship) and of course, there were the franchise's "mystery shoppers".

My headline was misleading - I was mystery shopped a lot more than once, but I don't want to bag them out too much. They had a purpose. 

From the store's viewpoint, our sales people nearly always remembered who the mystery shoppers were. There were always memorable little details that never quite made sense. Sometimes the reports were good. Sometimes they were bad. 

We were a small store in a regional centre that had a lot of competition. The difference between us and all that competition was that we had commission earning sales people and we weren't going to drop our pants on price just because someone walked in with a catalogue from elsewhere. Chances are we'd already seen it and we knew if the competitor had it in stock anyway and how far away it was. One franchisee even had a frank discussion with the manager of a competitor once at a vendor's dinner and told him exactly how we kept stealing their sales despite being quite simply - more expensive. 

We even had one salesman who was meticulous in his records. If he quoted you, it was kept in duplicate. 99% chance he had the potential customers name, phone number and had notes on the back of his copy how he'd worked the details out. I used to see those books when he emptied them. He averaged converting 50% of the quotes he gave into sales. High profit sales going to customers who'd return regularly, often bringing back people to see him. 

I could observe a lot in the store. It wasn't that big and I made it my business to float around the guys doing their thing. This guy in fact, I'd hover around him so I can take over if financing was involved. Financing wasted a lot of time. Period. The 30+ minutes on Saturday morning during peak time spent doing that crap was a whole lot of customers that came and went. He got help. He was also introduced into other salespeoples deals when they were likely to loose it. 

I digress. 

One day the franchisee took me in his office and handed me a mystery shopper report. It wasn't great. In fact it was horrendous - the customer was made to feel stupid, confused and didn't enjoy the experience.

As the most senior of his staff, that elicited a "please explain". 

As soon as I read the whole report it stood out. In fact I was laughing my rear off during it. 

I told the franchisee that I remembered this lady well. Poor older lady; complete look of horror on her face when she walked into a neon lit, shiny, noisy environment full of things that she didn't understand. Clearly someone who'd never been there before.

She asked about a "memory stick". We sold a lot of digital cameras. In fact at the time, we were murdering camera stores for digital sales. "Memory Stick" is a Sony branded card used for cameras. 

She didn't look certain - so doing the right thing that any professional sales person would do - I started qualified her in a hope of trying to work out what she actually wanted. I asked her if it was for saving photos on - Yes.  What type of digital camera did she have? Blank stare. 

Was she going to use it on her computer as well? Blank stare. "USB Sticks" at the time were new. She mentioned finally that she didn't have a computer and had never used one. OK. 

Back to the camera questions - I tried for a few minutes to nut out what kind of card she needed. No dice. I suggested finally that perhaps she could pop back in at some stage with her camera so we could work out which one of the half a dozen different memory card types hers needed.  We were there after all, to help. 

Off she went. 

So in her report she'd commented that I made her feel stupid and I'd left her confused. She'd never used a computer or a digital camera and didn't understand why I was asking her about them.  Then I got hold of the original paperwork she was given. 

This poor lady was tasked with coming in to buy.. A USB Stick. The only notes about that were that it could be used to save things like photos. 

Soo.. apparently a customer coming in to a computer store - somewhere that might as well have been a different.. and understandably overwhelming... planet, being asked to buy a USB stick, translates that into "memory stick" and thinks it's for digital photos, who then feels like a goose because they don't understand a damned thing about what they're looking for *OR* what to do with it, is somehow my fault. Yeah right.

I grabbed the boss's phone and called the company that handled the mystery shoppers then tore into them and suggested that perhaps if they needed to put a little more effort into ensuring their people have some basic understanding of what they're being tasked with before they waste every ones time. It's not really the shoppers fault she didn't understand - the clowns that decided to task her with it though really should have considered that sending a technically illiterate person into a shop that sells technology should at least understand what they're trying to achieve.  Or bring a damned picture from the latest catalogue.

The boss was in hysterics. I'd at least given the mystery shopper mob something to complain about this time. When they rang back to complain about me going off at them (apparently questioning them wasn't acceptable), they were laughed at again. I don't recall ever seeing another mystery shopper report after that. That suited me. We were on minimum retail wages before commissions, and I worked 12 day fortnights and was often there from 8am to 10pm most days. On what planet do you think we weren't going to do our best to close every deal that walked through the door?