Why Quality Shouldn’t Be Outsourced

You make vitally important decisions about your business based on the information that we gather and report to you.  That information must be of the highest quality and integrity, or you will make misinformed, or even catastrophic, decisions.

Our reporting accuracy rate is more than 99.5%, every month.  Our on-time completion rate is more than 98%, every month.  The detailed comments we bring our clients in every report have far more depth, truth, and accuracy than any competitor’s.  This is the core of what our clients have come to expect from us, and more importantly what they have come to rely on when making critical decisions for improving their business and customer’s experience.  Our Client Services team is there when you need them, passionate about what they do, always wanting to assure your complete satisfaction.  We are high-service, high-touch, highly flexible, highly responsive, and very client-focused.

This operating philosophy is easy to say, but very hard to do.  And still, more than 11 years into our journey, we’ve never lost a client.  Doing this requires really good, dedicated people.  Constant and intelligent communication.  Constructive feedback and coaching.  A very high level of teamwork.  Passion and commitment.  People who enjoy what they do, and working with and for each other.  Incredible amounts of training, evaluation, and re-training.  Honesty, thick skin, and always being open to improving and accepting feedback.  Ongoing testing of processes to make sure we have the best practices, in every area.  Investments in people, equipment, and other assets that others simply aren’t willing to make.

Two of the most-important functions that determine the quality and integrity of your programs include:

1. Sourcing, screening, educating and scheduling mystery shoppers (“scheduling”)
2. Reviewing reports submitted by mystery shoppers (“QA”)

More and more, our competitors are outsourcing these critical functions; sometimes, to companies or people whom they’ve never even met.  We just can’t imagine doing that.  It sure wouldn’t work for us, or our clients.

IntelliShop invests heavily in making sure we have what we believe it takes to follow through on our operating philosophy, meet and exceed our commitments, and make our clients smile and to feel confident in what we deliver.  Some of the ways we ensure this include:

• Being militant about our culture.  It’s takes a special person to work at IntelliShop, and to really “get” clients; not everyone has that.  If we don’t personally meet and work closely with everyone, every day, we believe our culture, and ultimately our business, could fail.
• Developing relationships with our team members, and our myster shoppers.  Developing and providing services, as opposed to manufacturing widgets, are dynamic, fungible things.  Often there are large gray areas to deal with, rarely anything purely black-and-white.  Knowing whom you’re working with and having a relationship with them is immeasurably helpful in our industry.
• Custom-designed office spaces, in a building we own, to promote creativity and good work.
• Team members who work at our office, not for another company or in another country.  While we do offer the opportunity to occasionally work at home, they first earn that privilege by proving themselves as exceptional team members, able to work in that environment, and they are required to follow specific guidelines when working from home (and yes, we “mystery shop” them to assure compliance!)
• All of our schedulers and proofreaders are paid as employees, not as independent contractors.  With the vast amount of training that we believe is required for every client program, we can’t imagine not being able to properly train our people and attempt to deliver the results our clients are accustomed to.
• Each of these team members is provided with an in-depth training program on our company, our industry, their specific position, and every client program.  As you know, training opportunities never sleep, and having our team right at the office with us helps assure this.

Why do we do all of this?  It’s just who we are, what we’re about, and where we draw our line in the sand.  This approach assures our Clients about our commitment to them and the information, analyses and recommendations we provide.  We believe this is why our clients refer to us as their Partner and not as a “vendor”.