You can feel when something's off. Inquiries that looked like a sure thing never book the call. A client who loved the discovery call goes quiet after the proposal. Your newest designer asks the same question in Slack three times because the answer only lives in your head, and somehow every revision round ends up in your DMs anyway.
The tricky part is that you already know your agency too well to spot it. You know which link in the welcome email is broken, so you never click it. You know the onboarding form asks for the brand assets twice, so you skip it. You know which folder the SOPs are in, even though nobody else has found them since spring.
Your clients and your team don't have any of that context. They only have the experience you've set up for them, and that's what Secret Shopper goes through, step by step, the same way they would.
What you get
A kickoff call
We start with a call to confirm your core offer for the client visit, agree your shopping credits, set up the assistant visit, and hear what you already suspect is going wrong.
A four-week undercover audit
Our team gets onboarded, observes how your agency runs from both sides, and audits every step of the client and team experience.
The Field Report
A full written report of everything we found, with all the gaps laid out and what needs to be fixed in each one.
Your plan
The findings pulled into order, so you know what to fix first, what can wait, and what can be handed to your team.
A final call
Once you have your Field Report and plan, you schedule a final call to walk through them with us and ask anything you need to.
30 days of Slack support
We stay on in Slack for 30 days after, so you have someone to ask while you and your team start making the fixes.
Your investment
Questions guests usually ask
How long does it take?
Four weeks from your kickoff call. In that time we get onboarded, observe, and audit, then you get your Field Report and plan and schedule your final call. Our Slack support continues for 30 days after that.
Does my team need to know?
We recommend assessing your whole team, so ideally nobody knows. If you need to tell someone, keep it to one person in a managerial or senior role. To keep it completely secret, book with an email address your team won't recognize, so nothing in your shared inbox or tools gives us away.
What are shopping credits?
To shop your offer for real, we need enough to make a purchase or pay a deposit. We agree the shopping credit budget with you on the kickoff call, and you send the credits during onboarding. Any unused credits are refunded, and card and processing fees are already covered in your fee.
Will my team end up doing real work for the persona?
Only as much as you decide. On the kickoff call, you choose how far your team can go on the project, and we test the client experience up to that point without your team putting in any creative work. The assistant's admin work isn't real either.
How much of my time will this take?
Very little after the kickoff call. During the four weeks, any questions come from the persona as the client or the assistant as the team member. We only message you in Slack when we genuinely need to.
Which offer do you shop?
As a prospective client, we shop your core offer, the one most of your clients come through. Once we're inside as a team member, we see the back end of every offer you run, so the Field Report covers how all of them are delivered, not just the one we shopped.
Will I have to take a discovery call with you?
If your process includes a discovery call, we'll book one the same way a real lead would, because that call is part of what your clients experience.
What happens after I get my Field Report?
You schedule your final call to walk through it, and we stay on in Slack for 30 days while you work through the plan with your team. If you'd rather hand the fixes over, the findings can feed straight into Ops Concierge or RESORT Mode, and you won't need to start from scratch. If you book Ops Concierge within 30 days of receiving your full Field Report, your full Secret Shopper payment is credited toward it.
How is this different from the Baggage Check?
The Baggage Check is a free self-assessment based on your own answers. Secret Shopper is an outside view, where our team goes through your agency and reports back on what we actually saw.