Mystery shopping has existed since the 1940s, but, even after 80 years, its presence in the multifamily industry remains underutilized. Mystery shopping can be an effective tool for ascertaining the customer experience, the effectiveness of on-site teams in everyday encounters, as well as an effective way to assess the digital aspects of business performance. Mystery shopping has evolved as well, providing better data than in the past.
MFE recently caught up with Kendall Pretzer, CEO of Grace Hill, about the benefits of mystery shopping. The company has provided mystery shopping services to its customers for a decade and recently acquired The Shadow Agency, a mystery shopping provider, as a way to bolster its offerings to multifamily owners and operators.
What does today’s mystery shopping for multifamily look like for an increasingly digital landscape?
Mystery shopping today can address all possible touch points of the customer journey—the moment the prospect submits an online inquiry to a community, contacts the team via a social media platform or over the phone, engages with a chatbot on the property website, or takes a physical, virtual, or self-guided tour, as well as many other ways.
Mystery shopping helps owners and operators measure any aspect of the leasing process with the option to design and customize the mystery shop to fit each property type and desired insights. Grace Hill mystery shops provide an objective window into these processes and can evaluate if the teams are following the customer interaction guidelines and policies set by the owner or operator. We can also examine whether prospect information is being effectively captured by digital tools and used by teams as intended.
Depending on the needs of the client, they can create a customizable shop with multiple requests, including following the typical leasing process, making initial contact via digital channels, assessing how teams perform during these phases, follow-up, and much more.
What are some of the benefits of mystery shoppers for owners and managers?
Despite popular belief, mystery shopping today goes beyond a shopper visiting a location to see how employees perform on-site. Mystery shoppers are independent contractors who specialize in conducting and evaluating the entire leasing experience. Many of these contractors also perform customer-experience feedback for other industries so the evaluation is indeed an authentic, unbiased customer perspective.
Mystery shops are an invaluable training and accountability tool for owners and operators. They evaluate performance excellence, service execution, property conditions, adherence to compliance requirements, as well as troubleshooting. Ultimately, shops are about improving the customer experience, which is one of the foundations of operational success.
Mystery shopping can easily identify missteps in the system, and owners and operators can then utilize this data to take corrective action where opportunities for improvement exist. This may include changes to employee training or adjustments to policies and procedures.
It’s important to understand that mystery shopping isn’t just about finding flaws. It’s also an outstanding tool for discovering strong points and then assessing if these strengths can be utilized in other areas of the process or even across the company’s portfolio. The approach shouldn’t be to “catch” leasing teams—it’s an all-encompassing evaluation of the leasing process and to find the superstars and efficient processes.
For example, if you have an on-site team at Property A that is doing an excellent job of following up on leads and you have an on-site team at Property B that struggles with that, you can compare and contrast processes, teams, and training to discover what requires improvement. Mystery shopping can help identify strong employee performers for mentorship and training as well.
Interestingly, mystery shopping has evolved alongside the rental journey, and it can also be implemented for all digital sources including virtual tours. User experience is crucial to digital leasing today, and these shops will examine any shortcomings or adjustments that need to be made to improve performance and usability.
What is most surprising to you when it comes to mystery shopping?
Multifamily is a data-driven industry. Mystery shopping is so data-rich and customizable, it can be surprising to find out that operators don’t utilize its full capabilities. Given that mystery shopping has been an established method of evaluating service and compliance for decades, I find some multifamily operators underestimate the extensive benefits to their business. Mystery shops are also a relatively easy process to implement among methods to inform and improve business operations and make smarter business decisions.
Any interesting anecdotes from recent mystery shopping experiences?
Our customers have an increased interest in the experience their customers are having with leasing at their properties, which has resulted in significant growth of mystery shopping volume since the beginning of 2023. We've witnessed, in particular, greater interest in evaluating interactions with AI, including if those automated processes are operating as intended and are contributing to or detracting from a positive customer experience. Through shops, we've helped customers track the timing and delivery of automated follow-up emails to prospects, as well as evaluating the use of self-guided tour apps. This helps teams discover and resolve gaps in digital communication, while saving time and creating efficiencies.
With the recent acquisition, how many multifamily customers will you be serving on an annual basis?
Currently, more than 1,120 multifamily customers are using Grace Hill's mystery shopping services, and the rising interest over the last year is continuing to push our customer group higher. As a real estate technology company that’s deeply committed to helping our customers improve property performance and employee development, as well as mitigate risk, a deeper investment in mystery shopping as a service made sense. With the acquisition of The Shadow Agency, Grace Hill's plan is to leverage the experience, technology and solutions of both companies to provide next-gen mystery shopping solutions—helping operators improve business operations and maintain a high-quality experience for both prospects and residents. We all care about the experience of the customer.
