Big Weekend

Welcome to the self storage blog, PhoneSmart’s window on the storage industry.

Happy Independence Day!

So the biggest holiday of the summer season is over – along with what is likely one of the biggest moving weekends of the year. This year, Independence Day just happened to fall on a Monday making it a 3 day weekend to boot. As a Secret Shopper here at PhoneSmart, the day was pretty quiet. Many of our shopping clients aren’t open on this holiday. But that doesn’t stop us. There was still work to be done, calls to be listened to, and shops to evaluate.

It was a very big weekend for our call center sales force. In fact we in Secret Shopping Land spent time almost every day last week in the call center helping out. It really helps us to get a new fresh perspective about our customers. We remember to pay close attention to our callers so we know how to make better shoppers.

We listen for what they need to store and what their situation is all about. As shoppers we try to be as realistic as possible and what could be more real than actual customers? Many of them were taking advantage of the long weekend and moving their entire house or just using the time to get some things out of the way. Whatever their reason, it made for higher call volume and lots of unit reservations.

We have heard some of the more unique stories as well however. It sometimes surprises me what some people are willing to tell perfect strangers about themselves or their lives. Then there are other customers who aren’t even willing to tell you what pieces of furniture they are storing so you can help them determine the right size. Many times, we are left with too much or too little information to accurately assess their needs.

All of the people we talk to when taking calls however, helps us learn how to be more realistic in our shops. We know what information people like to hold back and what info most callers give freely. It’s also important to listen to what people are likely to store in certain parts of the country as well as the words they use to describe things. It may be completely obvious that we’re shoppers if we are storing a baby grand piano or a classic car in a part of town that houses many lower income families. Also in some areas, a storage unit might be called a “bin” or a “locker”. As always, it all goes into the bank of knowledge that we use to get ideas of how to be better shoppers.

We are always learning from our customers. If it’s not how to sound more like them, it’s how to help them more effectively. We learn what customers are interested in and looking for in storage so that info can be used to sell our facilities and so we can pass that knowledge on through training our secret shopping clients.

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

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