Editor’s Note: Leslie Carothers, principal of The Kaleidoscope Partnership-an internet strategy consulting firm for the home furnishings industry, is on the vanguard of a new service called e-mystery shopping. We invited her to tell us more about the concept as our readers seek to maximize the opportunity to convert every possible prospect into a sale. Visit Leslie's website: www.tkpartnership.com

Forrester Research has conducted a study that shows 78 percent of furniture shoppers are researching their purchases online prior to making a decision. Often, once they've found an item of interest, their next step is to call or email either the retail location or manufacturer that has the item they are interested in purchasing. So here’s the question for retailers with a web presence: How many of those calls are your sales consultants or service reps turning into sales or dealer leads?

Just as retailers of all kinds, along with restaurateurs, hoteliers and other service businesses have for years employed secret shoppers to keep personnel at the top of their game, e-mystery shopping can provide home furnishings retailers with measurable and actionable data that can be used to coach your team into superior online conversion (sales) performance.

Exactly how does it work? Using a set of pre-determined criteria, sales associates or customer service reps are contacted over the phone to find out how well they perform each step of the conversion process—both over the phone and via email response. Once the data has been collected, managers are given a performance evaluation on each person with whom they interacted. This data can then be used for internal coaching or companies can continue to use our firm to provide this coaching to their teams via the internet.

Many retailers and manufacturers are experiencing significant increases in phone and email inquiries which does, indeed, represent “traffic.” It's just that the entry point for traffic is no longer the front door! As retailer and manufacturer websites continue to improve and cause consumers to “stick” to a site longer, the volume of this traffic will only increase. Using e-mystery shopping services to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses so you can maximize every consumer interaction in these challenging times is a strategy that prepares you to win.

About Leslie Carothers:
Leslie Carothers is a 25 year veteran of the home furnishings industry. In 2002, she founded The Kaleidoscope Partnership (TKP) specializing in design based sales training and, more recently, on consulting with retailers and manufacturers on how to powerfully and profitably use the internet to drive revenue and sustainable profits.