It’s a good idea to find out what your tasting room is like when you, the manager or owner, are not around.
As a former tasting room manager, I never minded when my boss used mystery shoppers. First, I was pretty confident my staff was performing at a high level. And second, if I did have problems, I wanted to be able to correct them. In general, I think it’s a good idea to find out what your tasting room is like when you, the manager or owner, are not around. But these investigations need to be conducted in a consistent and professional manner if they’re to hold any credence.
Sometimes, managers or owners will use an untrained friend or generic mystery shop firm to evaluate their operations. But tasting rooms are a unique experience, so they need mystery shoppers who really understand these special dynamics (versus other types of retail operations).
Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about: I once had a mystery shopper who inspected the men’s bathroom (more on that in a bit). As he washed his hands, he noticed a strong perfume in the soap; it was so overwhelming that he couldn’t smell the wine when he resumed tasting. This is obviously not a good thing, and I’m pretty confident that a friend or generic mystery shopper wouldn’t pick up on this important detail.
Set your standards
Using mystery shopping to train your staff creates an interactive loop of feedback and self-improvement. By evaluating others performing the same or similar tasks to the ones they’re expected to master, your employees are able to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses.
When I first started consulting more than 20 years ago, I developed a technique for bringing the training staff (usually about 10 at a time) into other tasting rooms to anonymously observe and interact with their employees.
Here’s how the day works: start with a morning training focused on sales and customer service, including proper greeting of new customers, proper pouring and describing the wines, the use of open-ended questions and analogies to create rapport with the guests, and other techniques leading up to asking for the sale. Then I train the group on how to be mystery shoppers. This includes observing both standard customer service behavior and softer skills such as conversationalism and wine knowledge.
One thing I mention is that guests should be greeted within 15 seconds — with good eye contact (if possible). If the trainees stand there after entering without being acknowledged, they will understand what it feels like and will be less apt to ignore their own guests in the future.
In my training, I talk about how women who are by themselves tend to get poor treatment, so I always send one woman in by herself to test for this. I also cover situations such as noisy groups and belligerent guests. And does anyone in your group look younger than 35? Were they carded? (Wineries: consult your HR provider to make sure you’re in compliance with company regulations.)
Finally, we identify three tasting rooms where none of us will be recognized. I prefer to visit tasting rooms as a walk-in customer, because it requires a more nimble response from hosting staff. This is easier these days because wineries need more traffic.
The basics
1. Carpool and park in a spot where the staff of the winery you are visiting can’t see you.
2. Break into small groups of two or three and enter the tasting room approximately one to two minutes apart.
3. Someone should visit each restroom (consider how you feel when you go out to dinner and the restroom is a real mess — the same applies to your tasting room).
4. This is not a cocktail party. You are being paid to be analytical. You may have a small sip of the wine to make sure it is not corked or otherwise off in flavor. Otherwise just fake (or spit) your tasting.
5. Never identify yourself as being from another winery because you will get preferential treatment and discounts.
6. The average stay is approximately 30 minutes. When I signal, it’s time for everyone to leave — also in a staggered order.
The follow-up
When we return to the parking lot, I ask everyone in the group, one by one, to give the experience a grade and then justify that grade. If you gave the place a C, why was it a C? Or if an A, why was it an A? This forces the staff to be more analytical about their job — and it brings home the training.
In my long experience doing mystery shop training, the staff loves it. And they finish the day with a fresh perspective and an eagerness to do a better job engaging customers and selling your wine and clubs.
__________________________________________________________________
Craig Root
Craig Root has more than 30 years experience working with tasting rooms. For more than 13 years, he was first staff and then a successful manager. In the last 20 years, he has consulted with more than 150 tasting rooms (including over 90 start-ups, mostly in the United States but also in China, Canada and France). He is the only person who lectures on tasting room design and management at UC Davis in its continuing and professional development division.