Sun 30th Mar 2008 02:04AM
Once upon a time shopping meant getting together with girlfriends and going to the mall. And yes, we do grocery shop, but most of us always thought of shopping as three or four girlfriends getting together, having lunch and spending all day at the mall. Going into the different stores spending everything we had, just good old fashioned shopping.
Not anymore. We do shopping for numerous things now. We shop when we are putting gas in our car because we know that down the street had gas three cents cheaper. We are shopping for different phone services. There are so many choices just to have a phone. Once upon a time we had one telephone company and that was it. Now we can shop for the best deal or the cheapest prices. And some of us are mystery shopping for a living. Mystery shopping is becoming a very popular job for people that like to shop and get paid.
What are so funny about the people who shop for self storage? There are call centers for self storage facilities, they answer calls for storage companies all over the United States. They will take calls and the customer will want prices for storage. Until some companies started taking calls for different self storage sites one would have never thought there would be choices in storage. So when those customers are shopping for storage they want the facility that they are calling for to sound the best. Call centers will mention the storage securities. For instance, the property has video cameras, the property is well lit and fenced, and there is a gate where only the tenants would have access to get in and out. So feel secure while you are shopping around for storage. Make sure the other facilities or companies have the same security so that way you can really compare prices. Another crazy thing is how many people that call are shopping for someone else. Some people say they have relative moving to the area that will need storage when they get in town. Or a mom will call while her daughter is at school. Even vise versa, the daughter is shopping for her mom while she is at work. Even these callers want to know about the facility and try to reserve the units so they will have one when they get in town or when they need one.
Shopping nowadays is done so differently there is thing called mystery shopping.
Mystery shopping is when you pretend you need some service and you see how much it cost. No matter if it is for storage or renting an apartment. Mystery shopping callers pretend that they want what you have. Mystery shopping calls are then evaluated to see how well the rep did. People hire mystery shopping companies to see if their employee was pleasant to talk to, how well the employee knows his or her service or product. The mystery shopping company then sends a report about the employee back to the owner.
So you can see we are just not shopping with the girls, we are shopping for gas, phone service, and cable. We might just be mystery shopping. Mystery shopping is a great service for businesses looking to improve their customer service skills.
The original article is located at: Shopping Around