“The shots decide everything!” – this postulate migrated into our lives from the last century due to his veracity proven by time. And today, many company managers want to know how their sellers, consultant managers, secretaries actually work, whether they comply with customer service standards accepted at the company.
Usually, such a desire arises in administrators when it becomes clear: the affairs in the company are not in the best way, and the notorious human factor may well be the fault of this.
As you know, conducting a personnel audit is not an easy task, a fresh, disinterested look from the outside is important here. An interesting step in the solution of the problem was the Service Buyer service, which first appeared in the 70s of the last century in the United States. It was then that the withdrawal of mass demand goods and sale through retail retail chains began to gain momentum to the market. It was not possible to verify each individual seller in the store itself, so they began to give the “Secret Buyer” services for outsourcing by advertising, personnel, consulting agencies.
How it looks in practice? An unremarkable person comes to the household appliance store and declares his desire to buy, for example, a washing machine. At the same time, he mentally evaluates how quickly the seller of the consultant approached him, whether he was polite and warning or answered questions without any interest. Each trifle is fixed: the level of technical literacy of the seller, knowledge of their assortment of the outlet, awareness of new products in a particular market segment, and even appearance.
The value of the service is that the store’s staff does not even suspect that he communicates not with an ordinary client, but with a “secret buyer”, therefore, he behaves as always, which was required to prove. According to the results of the work done, a detailed report is drawn up for the customer, in some cases, with recommendations for correcting the current situation. As well as outsourcing of accounting services, a similar method of checking personnel is convenient and profitable to order on the side. Firstly, this allows the company’s administration not to be distracted from its main activity, and secondly, it makes it possible to look at their subordinates with other eyes.
In fact, the “Secret Buyer” service reveals not so much the shortcomings and misses of personnel in the process of work as the internal reserves of the company, having involved which, can be achieved by significant market success.