Author: Admin

CARY, N.C. – Confero, Inc. (https://www.conferoinc.com), a national customer experience measurement firm, has announced that president and CEO Elaine Buxton was a preliminary judge for the 2012 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Buxton was one of 93 business professionals worldwide selected as a judge for the world's premier customer service awards, contact center awards and sales awards. The 2012 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service were presented on Monday, Feb. 27 in a ceremony at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

“Our entire team was so proud to receive the Stevie Award for Customer Service Consulting Practice of the Year last year,” said Buxton. “This year, I thoroughly enjoyed serving as a judge. There are so many firms executing on well-planned customer service strategies. The nominees were indeed

We received infromation today that someone using the name Kevin Bailey, posing as a representive of Confero, is asking people to wire money through Western Union. Please do not mistake the person calling himself Kevin Bailey as a Confero representative. He is not. Please do not fall for his scam.

As a reminder, Confero NEVER sends certified checks to mystery shoppers and Confero NEVER asks shoppers to wire transfer money. Read more about mystery shopping scams and

Jason Alderman, Senior Director at Visa, Inc. wrote a nice article explaining mystery shopping scams. Thanks for helping to the word out about these scams!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-alderman/mystery-shopper-scams_b_1247878.html

Confero, Inc. was recently notified about a new texting scam. The text messages, some using our trademarked name Confero, ask recipients to contact 888-408-1754 for information about making hundreds of dollars conducting mystery shops for cash back. Please do not mistake those text messages as legitimate! We called that number and our call was answered by what sounded like

People tend to do those things for which they are rewarded. To encourage employees to provide the customer service promised to our customers, employee incentive and recognition programs are put into place to reward employees who engage in desired behaviors or who achieve specific outcomes.Â

Desired behaviors can be measured by mystery shopping programs, manager reports, audits, customer feedback measures and performance reviews. Specific outcomes can be measured by sales amounts, referral numbers and the like.

No incentive program is perfect and, over time, sometimes employees figure out a way around the system to “earn” the incentive. In other words, sometimes employees “game the system”.

Here are some common games we see. We hope they help you in planning to avoid them.

The Game: Trick the Technology

If an organization uses technology alone to measure key service metrics and reward performance with incentives, the system is usually an easy target for gaming the system.

The modify the order trick. A mystery shopper overheard a training conversation at the first of two drive through windows at a quick service restaurant. When the mystery shopper attempted to hand the employee payment, the mystery shopper heard the trainer saying “No, never just accept the payment. Always be sure to click on Modify Order then click Ok before you accept the customer’s payment. This will restart the timer on our transactions so our service times will look good.”

The ring up single items as multiples trick. At a grocery store checkout, the cashier entered a fresh bagel purchase as