When Pamela Allison visits one
of many Hilton hotels in the Southeastern United States, she checks
how clean her room is, records how long it takes room service meals
to arrive and notes whether there is visible security in public
spaces. Allison isn’t just a finicky traveler, though; she’s a
managing partner at Orlando-based Service Quality Solutions Inc., a
so-called mystery shopping firm that focuses strictly on the hotel
industry.
“If mystery shopping is done routinely,
then the staff must stay in top shape,” notes Dave Buckalew,
Allison’s fellow managing partner at Service Quality Solutions. He
adds that a growing segment of the hospitality industry is waking
up to the fact that being “graded” by unbiased, anonymous auditors
is one of the best ways to take the pulse of service levels.
“We’ve tripled our business in nine
months,” notes Allison. She says Hilton is a major client, and her
corporate contact there recently signed on to have not only Hilton,
but Doubletree and Embassy Suites properties evaluated.
Allison’s day job is far from unique.
John Swinburn, executive director of the Dallas-based Mystery
Shopping Providers Association, says demand for such services in
the hospitality industry is increasing significantly. “The industry
at large is growing at 11 to 12 percent per year,” he says, “and
anecdotally, hospitality mystery shopping appears to be on the
rise.”
“We’re seeing a very significant,
pervasive adoption across almost every segment of the hospitality
industry,” says Jeff Hall, president of the St. Albans, U.K.-based
International Mystery Shopping Alliance and president of Ann Arbor,
Mich.-based mystery shopping firm Second to None.
What’s more, it’s not just hotels and
resort properties that are employing mystery shoppers. A growing
number of trade show exhibitors and even managers are hiring
companies to come in and anonymously audit their exhibits. All of
this activity benefits planners, since mystery shopping lets
vendors drill down to the person-to-person interactions that
distinguish good service from poor.
“You do have to be able to have a
measurement tool to assess customer service, and customer comment
cards are not enough,” notes Beth Cooper-Zobott, director,
conference services at Equity Residential in Chicago.
Undercover guests
Hotel mystery shopping falls into two
categories: Shoppers either evaluate the property from a guest’s
perspective, or they test the sales and convention services
departments by pretending to be meeting planners.
“We observe room cleanliness, the
condition of the hallways, the vending machines, workout
facilities, room service and the general attitudes of employees
when you pass them in the hall,” says Chuck Paul, president of
Norcross, Ga.-based mystery shopping company A Closer Look. He says
his shoppers also take note of things like the availability and
cost of Internet access and business services, which conference
attendees often use.
For her part, Pam Allison of Service
Quality Solutions says many of her evaluations focus on property
security. Her team will note whether security guards patrol the
meeting space, they’ll make sure doors are locked, and they’ll
request an escort to their room or the parking area to gauge a
property’s responsiveness to guests’ personal-safety concerns.
“Our hotel mystery shops are very
in-depth,” says Kathy Doering, president of Naperville, Ill.-based
Ann Michaels & Associates Ltd. “We do everything from recording
the phone conversation with the reservationist to measuring the
response time that it takes to get a requested service, such as
asking for someone to come help adjust the temperature in a guest
room.
“Hotels tell their people they’re being
mystery-shopped, so staff thinks every potential guest could be the
shopper. They try to do everything right and make them feel
welcome,” Doering says. “That’s the whole point of mystery
shopping.”
Meeting managers like Alexandra Wagner,
director of corporate event marketing at SunTrust Banks Inc. in
Atlanta, agree with this assertion. “Mystery shopping gives
management feedback they have no other way of obtaining,” she
says.
Mile High Mystery Shopping
If you’re taking a group to Denver, don’t be surprised to hear attendees raving about the friendly service and the tips they got for visiting local hot spots. The Mile High City is advancing the art of hospitality with an innovative program that combines mystery shopping with CVB promotion.
Jayne Buck, right, vice president of tourism for the Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau, and her team partnered with Norcross, Ga.-based mystery shopping firm A Closer Look and developed “Go the Extra Mile,” a program designed to turn the city’s cashiers, waitstaff and others into ambassadors for Denver.
Starting in June, shoppers fanned out across the city’s hotels, restaurants, shops, attractions and entertainment venues to find out if front-line staff were cheerful, efficient and quick to point visitors toward things to see and do while in town. For the most part, they were.
“Now we want to build on that efficiency and professionalism,” says Buck. “We want our people to be proactive in all scenarios.” For instance, she says, if a restaurant server noticed that customers were carrying tote bags emblazoned with the name of a conference, he or she could engage them and suggest a local attraction for them to check out during their stay.
“Go the Extra Mile” will include training for Denver’s front-line work force as well as initiate a series of bus tours of the city’s major attractions and lively presentations by the mayor and CVB staffers. Buck says her team is working on creating a web-based incentive program to reward participants who perform exceptionally well when A Closer Look mystery shoppers return to evaluate them. -- M.C.W.
Sales anonymous
Other types of hotel mystery shopping
programs focus on the sales and convention services departments.
James Coyle, founder and president of Coyle Hospitality Group, a
New York City-based mystery shopping company that caters to the
hotel industry, often has shoppers pose as meeting planners to
evaluate how a sales department handles different types of
requests.
“We’re testing them on standard stuff
you look for in a sales call,” Coyle says. “The big thing in our
industry is that salespeople have been order-takers during the
seller’s market of the past three years.” As a result, he adds,
hotel managers are often concerned that the staff’s actual selling
skills might not be up to par.
According to Coyle, hotel management
has good reason to be concerned. In many cases when his team calls
and requests rooms and space during a peak period, they’re just
brushed off. “A lot of times the phone just gets hung up. This is a
common occurrence,” he says.
The follow-up training Coyle offers
clients helps correct that, a boon not only for hotels looking to
ramp up their business, but for every planner who’s ever had a
request curtly turned down -- or ignored entirely.
Coyle and his team, no longer posing as
planners, will train the sales staff how to qualify a planner even
if the planner’s original request could not be met. He teaches them
to ask about the flexibility of their dates and whether the planner
anticipates doing business in the area when the property does have
availability. He even advises them to brush up on their
competitors’ offerings so they can recommend another local
property.
With such training in place, Coyle
says, a planner might still hear a “no” but come away with a
valuable lead on alternatives to place the meeting. Coyle also
teaches hotels’ salespeople how to ask specific questions about the
group and its needs, in order to highlight features to planners who
otherwise might not see much of a difference between Property A and
Property B.
Other firms that mystery-shop hotel
convention sales say they pose challenges to try to ascertain a
hotel’s flexibility and willingness to make changes. “We check how
well they deal with things like getting an additional room block or
50 more people at a lunch,” says Second to None’s Jeff Hall. His
team also notes how helpful a property is when it comes to
recommending outside vendors such as decorators and florists.
One mystery shopping company is even
offering a web-based evaluation of hotel sales departments. “So
much more group business is being done through the Internet,” says
Jay Delerno, president of Dallas-based Revenue Source One. His team
will send RFPs through a property or a chain’s standardized
proposal template and record the resulting correspondence.
What does Delerno find? “Hotels are
shocked to see what their salespeople are sending out,” he says,
which should come as no surprise to any planner who’s been
frustrated by the online proposal process. “I’ve seen e-mail
responses formatted with JPEGs that get picked up as junk mail and
never delivered. Some messages are riddled with typos.”
Delerno says results like this have
prompted hotels to invest more resources and oversight into the
online RFP process.
Trade show spies
The trade show arena also is subject to
undercover agents. Since more exhibitors are facing pressures from
higher-ups to quantify the ROI that show participation brings, they
are turning to mystery shopping firms to identify areas of weakness
in their booth staff, then building training programs around those
issues.
“Many of our clients are looking for
ways of validating what they do at a show,” says Barry Siskind,
president of the Toronto-based International Training and
Management Co. Siskind’s company handles mystery shopping for trade
shows across a variety of industries, including automotive,
pharmaceutical and technological.
To determine whether booth staff are
conveying the company’s message effectively and prospecting
fruitful leads, Siskind’s employees pose as show attendees.
Typically, a team of two or three shoppers will visit a booth twice
during the day to evaluate both the morning and afternoon shifts of
booth staffers.
“People who work the show are
ambassadors for the company. You can make or break relationships on
the show floor,” says Susan Friedmann, who goes by the title of The
Tradeshow Coach. “We look at how the staff behave, if they’re
chatting with each other and not watching people at the booth, or
if they’re on their cell phones.” Lake Placid, N.Y.-based Friedmann
says another frequent mistake booth staff make is too quickly
sizing up and dismissing attendees if the title or company name
displayed on their badge doesn’t sound impressive enough.
Some companies use mystery shoppers at
trade shows not only to peek in on their own booths, but on those
of their competitors, too. “We do a lot of competitive intelligence
gathering,” says Friedmann. “The trade show environment is probably
one of the most overt corporate espionage situations ever.” She
says she frequently emphasizes to booth staff employees not to
disclose or even casually discuss proprietary information while at
a show. “Be careful what you say and where you say it,” she
cautions. “There are eyes and ears everywhere.”
Pharmaceutical shows are a sector
that’s being mystery-shopped more frequently, according to those in
the field. A growing phalanx of regulations regarding communication
on “off-label” uses means that drug companies often hire mystery
shoppers to make sure booth staffers aren’t discussing prohibited
uses for their products. What’s more, some assert the FDA itself
sends mystery shoppers into pharma shows to make sure guidelines
are being followed.
“The FDA has very strict guidelines
that relate to events and what an exhibit worker can or can’t say
to a doctor,” says Keith Reznick, founder of Voorhees, N.J.-based
Creative Training Solutions. He adds that a complicating factor is
that different countries have different rules surrounding the uses
of the same drugs, including some that are considered off-label by
the U.S. government. As a result, if an international attendee has
a question about a use of a drug that is legal in their country but
illegal in the States, the booth staffer has to recognize this
quickly and decline to continue the discussion.
Agent for change
“Mystery shopping is a mechanism that
allows organizations to see the extent to which their brand promise
is being fulfilled,” says Swinburn of the Mystery Shopping
Providers Association. With more hospitality industry companies
seeking to quantify the intangible elements of customer service and
tie them to ROI, mystery shopping lets them assess worker attitudes
and competence with greater accuracy. It also allows a company to
concentrate resources where they are most needed.
Clearly, both the hotels that hire
mystery shoppers and planners who select those properties hope
these anonymous evaluators will help raise the level of service
attendees experience. Notes Cooper-Zobott of Equity Residential,
“By having trained, experienced people who are able to provide
objective feedback, a hotel has another tool to ascertain whether
they are providing good customer service.”