Phone calls to certain businesses, especially in the travel and entertainment industries, are on the rise, which may seem counter-intuitive in today’s world where the Internet does all the work for us.  However, the rise of SmartPhone technology means that often a customer is using his phone for the first contact. Most mobile-optimized sites feature a prominent CLICK TO CALL type of button, and people use it because it’s easier than typing. In the travel industry, another factor may be that a person is calling to try to find a better deal “in person” than the one they can book online.

On the other end of the phone line, your employees or call center better be ready to serve the needs of a every caller and do it well. Your goal, of course, is to get each caller to actually buy from you—book a room, make a reservation, etc.

Mystery shopping such as the kind provided by Customer Perspectives can be used to evaluate the quality of your call center’s service and its employees. Ways to make the evaluation reports you’ll receive effective include:

  • Letting your team know ahead of time that professional “shoppers” will be evaluating their calls. They’ll be more open to receiving the follow-up feedback, rather than if they were informed after the fact.
  • The call center’s schedule must be communicated to the mystery shopping firm constantly, to get effective evaluations targeting the correct personnel and/or times of day.
  • Use audio recordings and make those available to the call center employees after their evaluations.
  • Use your evaluation reports to provide positive reinforcement where ever appropriate.
  • Don’t use mystery shopping alone to evaluate your calls.  Your first analysis of performance should be bookings or revenues. The mystery shopping reports should be the second tool you use.
  • Meet with each employee who has been evaluated and have them evaluate themselves, for starters.  Role-playing to practice troubling types of calls can be effective in improving employee performance.