Mystery Shops
Attain
Mystery Shops
Improving Lead Conversion with Mystery Shops
Ellis’ mystery shops give all of the data and reporting you need to monitor your leasing performance and measure it against your established expectations, historical performance, and the performance of other properties, companies, and markets across the country. How are your onsite leasing teams performing?
What specific action can you take to get the best results for your properties? Once you have objective feedback on leasing performance, you’re in a better position to assess performance and take action for improvement as needed. Ellis provides you with valuable tools, training, and resources to help you quickly reinforce strengths and address any problem areas.
Shopping Products Tailored to Your Needs
Ellis offers a variety of mystery shopping services that can be used individually or in combination. Ask us to recommend what would be most helpful for you.
Telephone and Onsite Shop
- Begins with an individual posing as a customer (mystery shopper) conducting a telephone shop of the apartment community and an in-person visit to the community
- Provides objective and timely feedback on the telephone and onsite leasing presentation
Telephone Shop
- Begins with an individual posing as a prospect (mystery shopper) placing a telephone call to the apartment community
- Evaluates skills for converting telephone calls to onsite visits
Internet Shop
- Begins with an individual posing as a prospect (mystery shopper) completing an online form (through an Internet listing service/property website) linked to a specific apartment community
- Evaluates timeliness and quality of response to Internet leads and also helps identify technical and SPAM issues
Video Shop
- Begins with an individual posing as a prospect (mystery shopper) conducting a telephone shop and who is equipped with a hidden video camera to conduct an in-person visit to the apartment community *
- Provides an audio and visual understanding of the telephone and onsite presentation.
Virtual Leasing Experience Shop
- Begins with an individual posing as a prospect (mystery shopper) placing a telephone call to the apartment community
- Evaluates telephone and virtual tour skills, assessing the whole virtual leasing experience
Self-Guided Tour Shop
- It begins with an individual posing as a customer (mystery shopper), either conducting a telephone shop of the apartment community or setting an appointment online and conducting a self-guided tour onsite.
- Provides objective and timely feedback on the self-guided tour experience
Show of Success
8,000 Shops Monthly
By shopping approximately 8,000 apartment communities every month over 82% of NHMC’s Top 50 companies nationwide, we help provide insights into industry trends and where our clients can make the biggest impact.
Over 1MM Shops
Over 1 million mystery shops in apartment communities across the U.S. and Canada.
Latest Technology
Continual reinvestment in the latest technology and education improves services and products, keeping us abreast of industry trends that can give our clients an advantage.
Comprehensive Tips Library
The robust online library features over 100 training tips and performance enhancers.
Service-Oriented Team
Operations team of 80+ team members who coordinate the shop program, communicating details to our clients and shoppers.
Shopper Accessibility
Extensive reach to 6 Million+ shoppers nationwide (U.S. and Canada)
Comprehensive Shopping Reports
Ellis offers the most comprehensive shopping reports available. Keeping in mind that the customer’s experience now plays a factor in their decision to rent at your community, Ellis has added a Customer Experience component to each shopping report. The Customer Experience component reaches beyond the factual, objective feedback of the mystery shopping report, allowing expression of those subjective, emotional, and powerful reactions of the customer’s interaction to be shared with you. The valuable feedback includes a Customer Experience rating – 1 to 5 stars – and is offered at no additional charge as a complementary enhancement to your mystery shopping reports.
Each shopping report includes:
- Fair and unbiased feedback
- In-depth written evaluation
- Audio and/or video recording (optional)
- Powerful technical and emotional/customer interaction reporting
- Ellis’ exclusive Customer Experience 5-star rating evaluation
- Targeted online performance-based training modules
- Accurate, prompt, and professional review of every shopping report
- Real-time reporting on our customer dashboard
- Summary data reporting and download capability
- Participation in our exclusive quarterly Ellis Benchmark
Shop Report Notifications
We deliver alert-based reporting via e-mail and real-time dashboard reporting based on permission levels.
Push Reporting
- Completed Shop Report
- Quarterly/YTD Summary Reporting
- Quarterly Ellis Benchmark Reporting
Real-time Dashboard Reporting
- Understanding trends by shop type and by section
- Prioritizing action items/accountability through color-coding
- Understanding performance by region, VP, RM, etc.
- Understanding top and bottom performers
- Understanding technique and customer experience by a question
- Providing access to historical shop data by onsite team member
- Providing access to action planning/training modules
- Offering data exportable as PDF and XLS
Benchmarks
Have you ever wondered how your leasing professionals compare to those in comparable management companies nationwide? Our nationwide benchmarking program lets you know just that by evaluating performance on several key metrics across our entire database of mystery shops and resident surveys each calendar quarter. We also maintain a database of historical results for all benchmarks.
In a data-driven world, companies are continually utilizing various metrics and benchmarking to understand their overall performance. Ellis has been in the business of customer feedback for the multifamily industry for over 30 years, providing mystery shops, resident surveys, and online feedback tools. Throughout our history, Ellis’s customer feedback tools have continued to evolve to support and measure leasing performance and customer experience throughout the customer’s journey with you.
Benchmarks for the onsite mystery shop, virtual tour shop, and more recent resident survey programs will remain separate. Still, they will be published in a combined quarterly letter, recognizing top performers in each program.
Benchmark Calculation
- Traditional – 10 objective industry benchmark questions
- Customer Experience – 9 subjective benchmark questions based on 5- star rating
- Virtual Leasing – 10 objective industry benchmark questions
Participation Requirements
- 30 or more completed, eligible shops in the calendar quarter (onsite and virtual leasing shops, including video, that contain the 10 key questions will be considered eligible)
Ranking and Placement Guidelines
- Tier 1: 70 or more shops per calendar quarter
- Tier 2: 30 to 69 shops per calendar quarter
- Platinum winners for each Tier will be the only companies identified in the benchmark letter. At least one of the benchmarks outlined below must be met to qualify as “Platinum.”Traditional Benchmark Score for Platinum: 97% to 100%
- Customer Experience Benchmark Score for Platinum: 4.6 to 5.0
- Virtual Leasing Benchmark Score for Platinum: 97% to 199%
The 10 Ellis Traditional Benchmark Questions:
These questions must be included in the shopping report form for any company that wishes to participate.
- Set Appointment
- Obtain a Telephone Number
- Positive First Impression
- Identifying Specific Needs
- Discuss / Show Amenities
- Show Clean Apartment
- Sell Apartment Features & Benefits
- Overcome Objections
- Ask for a Deposit
- Would the Prospect Lease
The 9 Ellis Customer Experience Benchmark Questions:
These questions must be included in the shopping report form for any company that wishes to participate.
- Impression of community amenities
- Upkeep of common areas
- Impression of leasing professional
- Level of engagement by the leasing professional
- Attempt to relate the home to prospect needs/interests
- The way the home and community were presented
- The thought of calling the community home
- Perceived value in exchange for the rental rate
- Impression of quality of life-based on amenities and features
The 10 Ellis Virtual Leasing Benchmark Questions:
These questions must be included in the virtual leasing shopping report form for any company that wishes to participate.
- Set Appointment/Deliver Virtual Tour
- Obtain Telephone Number
- Positive First Impression
- Identify Specific Needs
- Discuss / Show Amenities
- Sell Apartment Features & Benefits
- Overcome Objections
- Ask for a Deposit
- Would the Prospect Lease
- Effective Follow-up
Implementing a Mystery Shopping Program
Mystery shopping allows you to collect objective and qualitative “real life” data on your customers’ experiences from their perspective. Through this technique, you can gain a more dynamic picture of customer service and identify key areas for improvement, making it easy to identify what changes you want to put in place.
Ellis can show you how to:
- Plan your mystery shopping program
- Establish a mystery shopping budget
- Select a mystery shopping company
- Establish expectations and goals for the program
- Develop a mystery shop template
- Establish a mystery shopping schedule
- Utilize the mystery shop results as a coaching tool
- Refine training courses based on mystery shop results
You Should Know
Creating a positive customer experience makes a huge difference to your bottom line. For instance, a poor leasing performer needs at least 150% more leads than a top performer to convert a telephone call to a visit.
Need Training?
We can blend your mystery shop results with training that is automatically assigned to your learners for a seamless learning experience for your team at Edge2Learn!