Since 1991, Advanced Feedback has been in the Customer Experience Management business; serving a variety of industries from hotels to hospitals and mom & pop to multi-national companies.

“It is nearly impossible to maintain a competitive advantage in any business if your service is less than satisfactory.” stated Zachary Hooker, President of the company. “And in this economy with today’s web based consumer, opportunities to shine are limited, your front line may have only one chance to deliver exceptional personalized service!”

With the addition of these four clients to Advanced Feedback’s client base, it shows that both healthcare and restaurant companies are concentrating on improving service during uncertain economical times. Providing an excellent customer experience helps to win over new customers and keeps them coming back for more.

Advanced Feedback offers many customized services for just about any industry including Onsite Mystery Shopping, Telephone Mystery Shopping, Customer Follow up, and both Employee and Customer Satisfaction Surveying. For more information and up to date news about how to improve your customer experience visit www.advancedfeedback.com.

Advanced Feedback has been providing services for the hospitality group for almost a year, however they have been working with Mr. Chisholm closely throughout his career since 2004.

“We have been both fortunate and honored to be working with Michael throughout his growing and continued success.“ said Geoff Gladu, Account Manager of Advanced Feedback, Inc.

The hotels rely on secret phone shops to monitor and improve each agent’s customer service skills. Mystery shoppers pose as potential customers and call inquiring about rates and availability. Agents are scored based on a number of criteria, such as qualification, reservation offers, aggressive closing, building rapport and value.

Linda Tran, Account Administrator of Advanced Feedback states, “Many businesses are relying on phone shops to see how the agents perform when they think that they are in the clear. It also helps business owners obtain the initial impressions of their guests.”

On a daily basis, Advanced Feedback provides immediate results to both the Quality Inn Auburn and Holiday Inn Express & Suites Camarillo, these results include the agent’s individual phone shop report and recorded call. This immediate feedback allows for corrective training and counsel to take place if needed.

For more information regarding mystery shops or phone shops to enhance your level of guest service, please visit AdvancedFeedback.com.

In part one of an independent national study to measure customer service and sales in today’s web-based world, Advanced Feedback, Inc. called over 250 boutique hotels to see if this traditional line of communication was any more personable than an online search.

“The phone shop doesn’t lie” explains Zachary Hooker, President of Advanced Feedback. “Unlike customer surveys or feedback requests, there is no upset customer or buyer biases, just the facts.  They either do it or they don’t”.  Zachary is referring to whether or not the front line is tasked with and performing the niceties of good old fashioned personalized sales and service:  “May I have your name?”, “Have you stayed with us before?”, “Would you have any special requests that I may help you with?”

The company began their study by focusing on a segment that should lead the pack in personalized services, boutique hotels, the popular personality or lifestyle brands of recent years.  Using a simple mystery phone shop to check rates and availability, Advanced Feedback was able to objectively determine if the hotel is intent on providing service any more personable than an online reservation form.

The answer is no.

In fact, based on their results one could argue that today’s hotel agents ask fewer questions to personalize the service than found in a typical online rate inquiry where we know we’re at least asked to select room type or bed preference.  One could also question if some properties have an objective to encourage guests to go online versus call their business. Looking at the data below tells us management is no longer committed to phone skills that include rapport and personalized services:

17%      Asked for the caller’s name

31%      Asked the caller if it was their first stay or reason for visit

9%        Asked about specific needs or preferences

10%     Mentioned any hotel amenities or benefits prior to quoting price

4%         Covered all four areas of personalization

Boutiques might be well designed to cater to a particular lifestyle or modern trend, but the Advanced Feedback study shows a missed opportunity to turn a hotel’s charm and personality into a memorable first impression.

Furthermore, looking beyond the qualifying aspect of the call, one might speculate that specialty hotels would at a minimum embrace each incoming call as an opportunity to highlight something interesting about the property.  Yet only 10% of those called mentioned even one unique feature or benefit of their boutique property!

“We started with boutique properties thinking this would be a benchmark for how good phone skills set the stage for a personalized hospitality experience.  We didn’t necessarily anticipate better overall skills from boutiques, as the major well known brands often have phone training systems in place, but we did expect the personalization to be there” continues Zachary.

Comparing the overall phone skills performance of boutiques to a sample of well known brands, collected during a control group survey, the study shows no overall difference, boutiques 37%,  majors 37%.  In addition to the personalization aspects of inbound phone skills  (rapport and needs assessment), the survey scored other phone handling and sales criteria such as the use of a professional greeting and asking for a reservation.  These scores, shown below, are also roughly inline with a random selection of non boutique hotels.

92%      Answered within three rings

82%      Used an appropriate hotel greeting

47%      Asked to secure a reservation

24%      Handled resistance to a reservation

33%      Attempted to lead the conversation

37%      Overall phone shop score

In general,  it can be concluded that the front desk or reservations is adequately staffed and trained to answer the phone professionally and politely, but that’s where the training stops.  It seems this is true across all brands, not just boutiques.  The company will know for sure when a second phase of the investigation is complete.  “Clearly when only 47% of hotel agents ask the caller to make a reservation, phone skills training is no longer front and center.  Excuses include cuts in training, attention to online sales, etc. but as long as you’re paying people to answer the phone, they should be selling your service”, challenges Zachary.

The survey covered a wide variety of self proclaimed boutique hotels, ranging in size from only a few rooms to over 500.  On average small boutique properties did worse in all areas.  Those with less than 50 rooms had the lowest average overall score of 21%.   Above 50 rooms, there is a weak correlation between a hotel’s size and practice of good phone skills, boutiques above 500 rooms faired best at 62%, but with a small sample size.

Rooms                          Average Score             Calls

1-49                              21%                             46

50-99                            34%                             49

100-149                        39%                             59

150-199                        44%                             30

200-249                        48%                             27

250-499                        34%                             31

500 plus                        62%                             10

All Boutiques                37%                             252

With regard to the drop in performance with fewer rooms, Zachary claims that it doesn’t have to be this way.  “Our on demand phone shops give small hotels an incremental and low cost solution to training, one equally as effective as programs used by the large hotels and groups.”

“Again, what’s keeping the scores so low are the components of communication where boutiques should excel, namely the personalization of the call.  Personalization as simple as asking for a callers name, asking if the caller has visited their property before, if there are any preferences, and mention at least one feature of the property that may be a benefit to the caller – on average, done less than 5% of the time” he emphasizes.

Advanced Feedback’s survey also looked at differences between specific cities, states and regions of the country.  In part two of this study the research firm will investigate variations in service between brands, independents and hotel groups.

Go to THIS LINK (http://www.advancedfeedback.com/hotelsurvey2011.html) for a copy of the full report, or to find out how your hotel fairs relative to others in your area, region or the national average.

“I wanted to see if agents would make an attempt at a sale … with someone calling their hotel from out-of-town.” explained Geoff Gladu, Account Manager for Advanced Feedback.  Perhaps not shocking to this group of seasoned mystery shoppers, but alarming to any business manager, the team did not find one hotel agent who attempted to continue the conversation beyond answering their initial question.  “I was hoping to hear something along the lines of  ‘would you like for me to check rates and availability?’ or “Is there anything else I could help you with?’ anything, really.  Also, no one even thanked us for calling”, he added.  Considering these businesses spend a good share of their marketing budget on getting travelers to call their hotel, Advanced Feedback’s survey uncovered pervasive missed sales and branding opportunities.
Perhaps the hotel agents ignored the sales opportunity because the scenario implied the caller wanted to stay closer to Sea World, 6 miles from Coronado? To test this possibility, the team conducted a second survey to the same properties with the question “what is there to do for fun in the area?”  This time, all hotel agents did fine to sell the area but only two agents built value for their hotel and only two others thanked the customer for calling. Again, not one hotel representative attempted to continue the conversation or make a sale.

Deciding to make it as simple as possible for the front desk agent to recognize a sales opportunity, without saying “I want to make a reservation”, the mystery shoppers called the same hotels a third time asking, “How much are your rooms?”

Only one out of the ten properties that were called received a passing grade; the agent qualified the caller, built value for both rates and property and even offered to make a reservation.  All others failed.  One property attempted to qualify the caller, another spoke well of their property, but all of them were quick to provide the rate and let the potential customer off the phone – never once asking if the caller wanted to stay there!

“With beach weather soon approaching, there’s no better time for these seaside hotels to learn how to recognize and pursue the sales opportunities given – this usually starts with phone skills via a mystery phone shopping program”, said Geoff.

In a challenging economy like the current one, Advanced Feedback’s research is a wakeup call to companies not to overlook the training and monitoring of frontline employees.

Traditionally, mystery shopping has been thought of in terms of the private sector, but increasingly public entities have turned to this service for monitoring compliance with regulations or measuring customer service levels (though the latter is primarily found in the UK.) As a result of legislation passed last year (HR 6331) that might be changing, says Kurt Adams, Senior Accounts Director of Advanced Feedback, a leading provider of telephone monitoring services. “It may the dream come true for many Americans” who wish for greater accountability and higher customer service levels from their government, commented Mr. Adams.

While the law passed last year deals with Medicare Advantage and how it is marketed to the public, it may be a portent of things to come, he speculated. (Specific concerns were allegations of ‘bait and switch’, ‘misrepresentation’ and ‘misconduct’ on the part of agents and brokers.) “It could well be that this model could be a harbinger of things to come. In this case, both the government and private agencies have seen the wisdom of using secret shopping as a means for ensuring compliance, but our hope is it will be used to increase customer service awareness as well”, he concluded.

You can reach Kurt at www.AdvancedFeedback.com.

OPH is the latest client to use Advanced Feedback’s telephone mystery shopping services (phone shops).  The hotel group had tried other mystery shopping companies but turned to Advanced Feedback based on the recommendation from Michael Chisholm, Executive Director, who expressed that he “was most comfortable with his overall experience with Advanced Feedback” when he was a hotel general manager.

OPH will use the phone shops for quality compliance checks across their range of properties and will further encourage the use of phone shops as a flexible tool to improve hotel service and sales with better phone skills.

Linda Tran, Account Administrator at Advanced Feedback states, “in these economic conditions, many businesses rely on phone shops and mystery shoppers to be their eyes and ears on their employees, and to serve as an effective alternative to quickly-forgotten and costly training.”

Advanced Feedback mystery shoppers, posing as potential customers, call hotels inquiring about rates and availability.  Employees are scored based on a number of criteria, such as qualification, building rapport and value, sales offers, aggressive closing, friendliness and helpful knowledge.  Advanced Feedback provides immediate actionable results in the form of an individual phone shop report and recorded call, and then follows up with a trend report to track continuous improvements.  “We welcome and look forward to helping Ocean Park Hotels maintain their high standards of sales, quality and an excellent customer experience” says Linda.

For more information regarding mystery shops or phone shops please visit www.AdvancedFeedback.com.

While employee interest in getting or retaining a customer’s business is undeniably an aspect of good service, how and when this is manifested can be of equal importance. Specifically, Adams’ cites asking the customer for the business in the first 10 seconds of the call. “I know it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but isn’t that like asking someone for a date before knowing their name?” he asked. Good phone skills suggest building at least some level of rapport with a prospective client before getting to the proverbial bottom line. Showing interest in a customer is more than asking repeatedly for an appointment or reservation; other elements include using the customer’s name or asking how they happened to be in the market for the company’s services. Moderation, as Ben Franklin reminds us, is a good thing.

You can reach Kurt Adams at www.AdvancedFeedback.com.

Phone shops are placed to help make sure that each incoming call is forwarded to the correct department is important.  Phone shops help get pet related questions answered correctly while capturing the quality and level of the customer service by targeting each of the Humane Societies eight departments.  These calls range in a number of different scenarios and are valuable to Nicole due to the frequency of the calls, which are delivered to her by email including the recording and a detailed survey within 24 hours. These phone shops help keep the employees on their toes and provide the required level of customer service to all guests, both two legged and four.

The onsite mystery shop conducted each month not only targets a specific department but also the main facilities.  With a full summary of the details, along with an easy to understand scorecard, the information allows Nicole to visualize from the customer’s point of view.

When asked about the program after six months of use, Nicole stated, “We are very happy with the shop results and are finally able to really use a lot of the data we have collected for training and new hires.”  At www.advancedfeedback.com you can learn how this mystery shopping firm is able to customize and tailor their services to fit your needs.

The hotel relies on phone shops to monitor each agent’s customer service skills. Mystery shoppers pose as potential customers and call inquiring rates and availability. Agents are scored based on a number of criteria, such as qualification, reservation offers, aggressive closing, building rapport and value, friendliness and helpfulness. Linda Tran, Account Administrator of Advanced Feedback states, “In this day and age, many businesses are relying on phone shops and mystery shoppers to be their eyes and ears on their employees. Phone shops are made to see how the agents perform when they think that they are in the clear. It also helps business owners obtain the initial impressions of their guests.”

On a daily basis, Advanced Feedback provides immediate results to the Beach House, these results include the agent’s individual phone shop report and recorded call. This immediate feedback allows for correct training and counsel to take place if needed.

For more information regarding mystery shops or phone shops to enhance your level of guest service, please visit AdvancedFeedback.com

In 2008 Advanced Feedback Inc. was contracted to provide telephone and onsite mystery shopping services at various resort and real estate developments throughout Mexico. International developers and property managers often use a combination of both in-house and out-sourced sales and service personnel presenting a challenge of both distance and diversity. Lacking employee measurement and customer feedback, our clients turned to Advanced Feedback for a standardized and in-depth secret shopper program, says Geoff Gladu, Account Manager for Advanced Feedback.

The San Diego mystery shopping firm sent affluent North American real estate and vacation shoppers to observe and record their sales and service experiences as potential buyers of resort and residential real estate. Advanced Feedback’s detailed reports, audio and video were used to ensure our clients were getting adequate and appropriate attention to this target market.

With world economies in rapid flux, a cross-border mystery shopping program may offer an element of comfort, a performance barometer to ensure your international sales efforts remain on track.  For more information visit www.AdvancedFeedback.com