By Rich Croxford, Account Manager
You are probably losing leads right now.
Every missed call, every delayed response, every unanswered enquiry.
The question is, when you get a phone call from a potential client/customer, do you know how your team deals with it?
How does mystery shopping work?
If you’re wondering about the conversion skills of your team and the whole journey a person takes from finding your website to becoming a customer, a mystery shop works like this:
- One of the team here at JE Consulting will call up your office, email your team or submit a form and pretend to be a prospect.
- We’ll note down what happens next, how we’re treated and who we speak to.
- Then, we write a report on the results and present it to you for review.
It’s as simple as that!
However, what we’re looking for, as mystery shoppers, is a range of criteria and metrics that demonstrate how well your business performs in sales situations. These include:
- How quickly enquiries are acknowledged and followed up and whether this aligns with expected SLAs (if there are any)
- Tone, confidence and how your team engages on first interaction
- Whether the right details are gathered to move the enquiry forward
- How efficiently prospects are directed to the right person
- Whether leads are chased, or quietly lost
From all of this, we evaluate the overall experience and how the journey feels from a client’s perspective so that you can work on improving your lead time and conversion percentage.
Secret #1: An untrained team is one that loses you money
JE Consulting does customer experience training with some of our clients and it’s startling how different my experience as a mystery shopper is before and after.
Those who aren’t trained often call me back hours (or days) after they should – despite the fact that “you are 21 times more likely to qualify your lead with a quick lead response time than if you wait for more than 30 minutes.” (Chilli Piper, 2025)
Only last week, (at time of writing), I submitted a form to a solicitors’ website at 10:30am and only had a response at 5:45pm!
If I were a real prospect, I might have been driving home, cooking dinner or doing something else entirely rather than answering the phone and in this case, I missed the call and only realised they had responded when I heard the voicemail!
By the way, they haven’t chased me or followed up yet, despite five days passing by.
That’s a lost lead and a lost conversion.
Most firms invest heavily in generating leads, but very few look at what happens next.
If your team takes hours to respond, doesn’t follow up, or lacks confidence on the phone, you are wasting the money you’ve already spent to generate them.
Secret #2: Your receptionist is one of your best salespeople
The person on the front desk and the one that filters all phone calls is the gatekeeper to your time but also the most powerful sales funnel of all.
Yes, they protect you from telesales people and often keep your calendar manageable but are they helping you make sales too?
When I do mystery shopping, I always write notes on the “vibe” of the receptionist:
- Are they grumpy or upbeat?
- Do they take the right details from me?
- Do they ask my name, email address, number?
- Do they get me to the right person quickly?
- If the right person is busy, how do they rectify the problem?
- Do they find out where I came across the brand?
- etc.
Any good mystery shop should be looking into these issues and paying keen attention to the results because they matter.
Your receptionist doesn’t just do administrative tasks, they are your first sales touchpoint, and they set the tone for interactions with the rest of your team.
Secret #3: Gen Z can speak on the phone just fine (mostly!)
I’d put a bet on the fact that the moral panic about Gen Z not being able to speak on the phone is overblown.
Yes, some of us struggle with it (just like every generation) and maybe we’re more comfortable with emails.
However, I’ve done mystery shops in the past where the apprentice has outshone the older, more experienced director on every metric.
Maybe they didn’t get everything right in the conversation but sometimes positivity outweighs the efficacy of overloading the prospect with facts.
Secret #4: I can hear how you’re sitting
I know if you’re slouching.
I know if you’re talking with your hands or sitting still.
I know if you’re enthusiastic about the topic of conversation.
I know if you’re thinking about your next meeting or the leftover Chinese takeaway you’re going to have for lunch.
It’s not because I’m some mystical, highly trained expert on body language who can teleport through the phone – it’s just a human thing we all do.
Trust me, next time someone calls you up, try to work out how they’re sitting and what’s really going through their head.
Then, think about how this impacts your conversion and sales rate.
What does a strong client experience look like?
Within all of the secrets and confessions above you can see that I’m trying to drive you to create a seamless, positive interaction at every touchpoint.
When I call up your business, I want to feel valued, listened to, understood and I want your prospects to walk away with the impression that they’ve made the right decision by choosing your service.
All of this boils down to the following:
- Speed: Responding within 30 minutes can massively increase your chances of converting a lead (21 times if we refer to the Chilli Piper statistic above).
- Tone and attitude: It’s not just what’s said but how it’s said. Does your team sound engaged and enthusiastic on the phone or over email? Are they approachable and professional, even under pressure?
- Personalisation: Make sure your receptionist asks the right questions to ensure your prospect gets the help they need and your salesperson speaks directly to their situation.
- Efficiency: If they have to jump through hoops or wait around for responses, your user experience will suffer.
The simple way to look at it is: “Would the process make me more or less likely to become a customer?”
We do mystery shopping on a national scale from our office in Birmingham
You might be surprised to hear that your competitors are doing mystery shops on both themselves and you!
It’s an open secret in the marketing world that this is going on, and they probably know your prices and whether you’re doing the right things better than you yourself know.
Don’t let them get ahead of you by neglecting this key area of marketing.
We tie in every aspect of marketing – from getting prospects into the funnel to monitoring how they progress through it.
You’ll get a kick-off meeting with your mystery shopper and discuss the things you want to test as well as a detailed report at the end explaining the good, the bad and the ugly of your customer journey.
If you want to understand (and improve) how your firm converts enquiries, get in touch to arrange a mystery shop.
P.S. why not test how quickly we get back to you? See if our sales funnel is as good as we make out!
