I need some help and intel...are any of you seeing decreased mystery shop scores?

Greetings from So Cal!
I need some help and intel...are any of you seeing decreased mystery shop scores? If so, what are you doing about it?
We are on the struggle bus with BASIC protocols, and yes, there is significant training at on boarding and ongoing!! We had a HUGE in-house conference addressing leasing and customer care and the scoring needle has not budged! We added bonuses based on higher scores...only 2 have made it.
I would love to hear what you all are experiencing.
TIA!!

I had this issue once and this is what helped me. I would do you own mystery shop maybe twice a month. And after the tour give the agent feedback. What I would do after the tour is have the “prospect” do the tour route with us again and give feedback to the agent. I usually use friends in the industry to help me with this. helped tremendously.

Lee Ann great idea!

I think ya gotta get back to the basics. Walk them thru it as if you were the agent and them the prospect. I have had great success in having them shop other properties to see what others do or don’t do. Give them a shopping report to use and grade.

We just re-evaluated and adjusted our shop criteria to be more in line with today’s leasing world. We thought more along the lines of “what do we need to say or ask to get them in the door” and removed anything that was irrelevant. Using the same phone shop had us keeping people on the phone way longer than they wanted to be. The video shop just had redundant questions already covered when the shopper called to make the appointment, so we took them away. This just went into effect but I think it’s going to help.

As others have said above, have them shop the comp. and score their experience. Ask them to tell you/show you how they would do things differently on anything they give a low score. On high score, ask them what they liked and how it made them feel. Also, have them shadow a strong agent or yourself. I also used to do in-house competitions. I would literally get out PosterBoard, and I would draw things like a tree. Then I would cut out little leaves and oranges etc.  One person would be leaves, one person would be oranges, and one person would be whatever else you want to put on the tree lol each time they got a good score- they got to put theirs on the tree with their score on it. Whoever had the highest at the end of the time (6 months) would win a day off with pay. You can choose the prize, but people enjoy extra time off more so than a gift card.

Many/most markets are great around the country. Great markets. Breed sloppy sales techniques because we turn in to order takers and lose our salesmanship skills. It's human nature. The best leaders will focus on "sharpening the saw" in good times and bad.

Jim Collins yes!!!!

Do the audio/video recorded shops. Then theres no questions

Megan Goodmundson YES!!!! I just don't think anyone cares but me!

Angel Rogers that may be apart of the problem. Maybe incentivize good scoring. Like a gift card or lunch.

Lee Ann we are doing $100 for any score over 85%. It is so frustrating!

Angel Rogers oh that’s get me going for sure! Is there any disciplinary action taken for shops that don’t meet the mark? Like a 60 day evaluation. Sometimes negative reinforcement work?

Lee Ann i am at a loss! I'm the Director of L&D and need to have this conversation with our Regionals.

Angel Rogers or your talent acquisition team. I know that helps with the company I’m currently at. If you fail a shop or it doesn’t meet standard even PM’s you go under a 90 day review and you have to perform or you’ll face disciplinary action. If your shop is good you’re rewarded as well. Our talent acquisition team does provide trading for the first month and you go over all the shop material again. They let you m or exactly where you went wrong and what you could have don’t to improve.

I recommend looking at your shop questions and scoring. You can give an amazing customer service experience and still score low on your shop. If you partner with a company that allows you to edit questions, scoring and weight, you should absolutely tweak your shop to fit your company's values and training. I used to train and would tell our leasers that's I'd rather see a beautiful 80% shop than a terrible 100%!

Yvette Evans agree and we have made some edits.

Do mock tours and roll play. Go through all the expected benchmarks. Start with scripts and encourage the team member to add their personality to it. I use to have an RPM that would make me do this. It was super awkward at first, but I got better and had fun with it.

Have you asked the team members their concerns? Or what they feel they need? This only after sharing why they are doing what they are doing....

Yes! This is true! I think younger people are resistant to scripted structured presentations. They don’t feel they are sincere. Maybe we should “loosen” the reigns and measure them on their results? I don’t know. It seems time for some structure change, I guess.

Lisa Odle thats just it, we have changed the scoring models to reflect current trends.

Hot take, but if your occupancy is good, shops are dumb. That’s just my opinion. Never been a property manager…probs will never be, because I am not very good at sugar coating or skirting truths…but I just feel like shops have always been ridiculous. And they make everyone sound so robotic. This lady I worked had the best shops but when I was a leasing agent, I made all the bonus money and I always had bad on shops. You have to just go with the flow of the person in front of you. They set the tone, not the leasing staff. Obviously you don’t want like a super mean person or someone who lies or things like that…but puking information at people that they will undoubtedly forget anyways, is a waste of everyone’s time.

Taylor Kramer it is about customer connection for us. I never want anyone to sound like a robot, our challenges are with complaints about how people are treated. No one is being outright rude, just not helpful.

Angel Rogers that makes sense. Sorry for my rant

I had mine shop our competitors. very eye opening for them and things improved double quick.

Shops can be a tool, however, each person coming in the door has different needs and that makes tours individualized. Sometimes over shopping can become as much of a problem as poor shopping scores because your leasing agents become more concerned with asking the right questions vs creating connections. I agree sending them out to shop the competition can be eye opening. Gear their after shop report on things like did you feel welcomed walking in the door, how was the community presented during the tour. Did the agent make you feel like you wanted to live there, if so what stood out. If not why, was it the community itself, or how the leasing agent made you feel. Did you learn anything you would want to incorporate in your tours, if so what and why.This type of after tour report gets them thinking about best practices in touring and may help them find a successful style of their own.

Kiki Clarke's on-site teams RAVED about her training on this! Maybe reach out to her?

Lilah D Poltz yes!! Sending a DM! Let’s chat

Thanks for asking this question, Angel! I'm finding the responses super helpful for me!

Rommel Anacan same!!

We just tweaked our whole program including changing questions to be more relevant. We also do a virtual class for anyone scoring below an 80. But remember a shop is one person out of how many??? We ask our associates to listen to real calls in CRM and grade those. That can be very eye opening for sure. The Pandemic set the world of customer interaction back, so we are back to basics.

Pattie Woods us too!

Oh yes, these are great comments. We’ve been doing audio and video recording for years now and it’s so much better for training but after Covid, the customer experience was ramped up in our questions so it’s been a challenge to get those scores higher however in reviewing scores, seeing high ratings will trump the score. I’ve also sent out short video quick tips to the sites being shopped that the associates found very helpful. We have a telephone notepad too so it’s easy to flow in their personality and convo instead of robotics.

Agree with all comments. We are seeing this nationally and @ The Pivotal Companies via our shopping program. We have ramped up our training and offer one on one phone skills training as an additional service to our secret shopping program in an effort to really dial in and hold the teams accountable. Be certain to celebrate the WINS and make a BIG deal of those doing great to help incentivize those struggling to listen, watch, & learn from the team members that knock it out of the park! Good luck, & would be happy to strategize with you! Shoot me a message if you are open to it!