As the business has grown over the past 20 years, performance improvement industry leader Douglas Stafford has been continuously increasing its national network of mystery shoppers.

The man in charge of coordinating over 100 mystery shoppers across the UK is Kevin Jennings, who has to meet the wants and needs of both clients and team members. Field Scheduling Manager Kevin is responsible for making sure the vast numbers of physical mystery shops conducted each year are completed efficiently and to an extremely high standard.

Every mystery shopper working for Douglas Stafford is handpicked by Kevin, who oversees the detailed, high level of training each shopper undergoes to ensure the performance improvement company provides its clients a high quality service.

“Kevin is an unsung hero within the Douglas Stafford team,” says Ben Sargeant, Operations Director at Douglas Stafford. “He is an integral part of the team, who completes the task of keeping mystery shoppers happy whilst meeting the exact specifications of each bespoke client programme in a fine fashion.”

Douglas Stafford puts great emphasis on practicing what it preaches and believes its high level of attention to detail, employee motivation and skill translates into achieving the industry leading status it carries within the mystery shopping and performance improvement field.

For more information on Douglas Stafford, visit www.douglasstafford.co.uk

Stormfront, a leading Apple Premium Reseller (APR), has been working with performance improvement company Douglas Stafford to maintain its high level of customer service. The UK based company has grown rapidly over the years, selling a vast number of Apple products and is now the UK’s largest APR.

With ten stores spanning across the UK, Stormfront are dedicated to providing high quality services and took the decision to analyse its business performance with Douglas Stafford to compliment mystery shops being conducted by Apple.

The company aims to provide an ‘excellent buying experience for both new and existing Apple customers’ and states that its employees have ‘excellent product knowledge.’ Stormfront feels it is not only important to aim for a high level of customer service, but to achieve it.

The programme Douglas Stafford provides consists of monthly physical mystery shops for the retailer, mirroring Apple’s own covert shops to analyse, report and improve its levels of customer service. Store managers are given direct access to results via Douglas Stafford’s bespoke reporting portal, DSInsight.

Stormfront provides both its consumer and professional clients with excellent value added services, such as its ‘personal trainer scheme’ aimed at switchers and new Mac users. The scheme is designed to ensure people ‘move in’ to their new Mac with ease and reap maximum benefit from its capabilities.

“I have been very impressed with the extent to which Stormfront has adopted the use of mystery shops to improve customer experience,” says Chad Robbins, Douglas Stafford’s Account Manager. “The results we provide have improved the company’s service levels significantly. Furthermore, the programme allows managers to ensure the high level of standards set by Apple are upheld at all times.”

For more information on Stormfront’s products visit www.stormfront.co.uk.

The Douglas Stafford team is a very close-knit community with a plethora of different talents outside the office. For example, when she’s not working, Helpdesk Coordinator Katie Perrin is lead singer in a band called Cultural Underground,  who have seen great success in a number of competitions across the UK.

Making it all the way to the area finals (covering the whole of London and the South East) in the Live and Unsigned Competition in May, the band got to perform twice at the Portsmouth Guildhall.

The band also won the chance to perform at the Stokes Bay Festival on the 25^th June after entering ‘Gosport’s Got Talent’ competition.

“We are very proud to have such a talented singer in our team,” says Charlotte Shilling, Project Manager at Douglas Stafford. “Lots of us have been to see Katie perform – her and her band really are very good!”

Cultural Underground will be performing in Southampton on the 18th June and at a number of events in Gosport later this year.

For more information on Douglas Stafford visit www.douglasstafford.co.uk

Nearly half of businesses are failing to listen to their customers and act on their feedback, according to Marketing Week magazine.

The magazine has revealed that 47% of companies had no strategy to engage their customers, according to a survey by research company Targetbase Claydon Heeley (TBCH), which looked at 130 businesses across 11 sectors.

TBCH Chief Executive Steve Grout said that too few companies took a holistic approach to collecting and responding to comments from the public.

Performance improvement specialist Douglas Stafford has developed and refined a number of initiatives such as mystery shopping, customer contact programmes and performance coaching to both connect and reconnect with customers, collect feedback, analyse employee interactions with customers and crucially, provide a solution to this lack of engagement.

As more and more businesses take advantage of the undeniable benefits Douglas Stafford’s Showroom Appointment Initiative provides, its Customer Contact Centre has already doubled in size.

The performance improvement expert’s clients are reporting up to 50% increases in the number of sales generated in their dealerships thanks to the Showroom Appointment Initiative’s ability to identify opportunities, create leads and generate showroom traffic.

“We are really pleased with the level of sales our initiative is generating for our clients,” says Douglas Stafford’s Contact Centre Manager Madelaine Cook. “The initiative combines the best knowledge and know-how in the industry and finds the perfect balance between being effective in generating appointments and improving customer relationships.”

The scheme’s cost effective and measurable results are attracting a number of leading brands and dealerships. Following the Showroom Appointment Initiative’s success, Douglas Stafford is launching a number of new services provided by its contact centre team.

For more information, visit www.douglasstafford.co.uk.