Secret Shopping Course.

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I have taken part in lots of useless but mandatory participation job training courses, from which I received certificates that the trainers expect will impress my job interviewers. Most of these certificates might as well be a badly crayoned in drawing of a cat labeled 'Kat’, or my school length-swimming certificate for all the good they achieve. One course I did had a few interesting exercises though – among them, we were given basic training as secret shoppers. This is something useful to learn if you are working or even shopping a lot in retail in big department or chain stores. Franchise bosses send someone to shop from you but they are secretly assessing your efficiency and quality of service. If you know what the secret shopper is looking for you can be seen meeting their expectations, and even as a shopper it is a quality of service you should expect. So what would you do as a secret shopper? Without necessarily buying anything, visit a big High Street store. Is it clean and tidy? Are the queues at the tills long? Do the staff look friendly? Are security guards attentive but non-intrusive? Can you even tell who the staff are? They should wear uniforms smartly or at least sport name badges to help you tell them from your other shoppers in case you need assistance. Customers looking happy? Great, but don’t assume a tense customer is only upset by something happening in the shop – they might have had a rough time before even going there. Are goods easily seen and clearly priced? Either genuinely or in presence, claim not to be able to locate an item you want to buy to see how pleasantly staff direct you towards it – if they tut, raise eyebrows or act condescendingly, they lose points, etc. Once served, are you offered help packing goods? Does the checkout assistant smile sincerely? Do they tap fingers impatiently as you sort out the cash or bankcard you are paying with? This is the kind of thing a secret shopper checks out, and awards / deducts points for – do it for yourself too – you might be surprised by what you see. And if you work in a store, think – any of your hundred customers might be a secret shopper too so treat them all as if they are, for a true secret shopper could even put you out of business with a bad score on their reports. Arthur Chappell