Secret shoppers took over Whitecourt on a mission to see how the community ranks

 

Most people have heard about mystery shoppers or secret shoppers. For those who haven’t, they are individuals who are hired or who volunteer to shop at certain stores to see how the customer service is and how the store is serving its base overall. Recently, a neat little experiment took place in Whitecourt and only three people were aware of it: the mayor, the chief administrative officer, and the economic development officer.

The mayor of a community within Alberta reached out to Mayor Maryann Chichak roughly six weeks ago to offer her a part in something a little sneaky. “We talked about the fact that our communities grew the same way with a major highway that runs through them. We also have roughly the same size of population and the same demographics. They thought it would be really nice to exchange reports on each other’s community,” explained Mayor Chichak.

How would the reports take shape? With mystery visitors! A group from the unnamed community arrived in Whitecourt at some point a couple of weeks ago and explored every corner of the town. “They went to our different town-owned facilities, talked to the staff, and asked questions. They roll played and said they were planning on moving to Whitecourt or were coming here to work and asked for suggestions on things to do and for information about the community.”

They looked at things such as appearance, cleanliness, how the community developed, how many amenities are here and how well versed the staff were in the municipality. “They went into businesses and did the same thing. They sat down in restaurants and coffee shops and gave the same story and asked the same types of questions,” she said. They also went to gas stations and various stores to get a sense of how things are in Whitecourt and what residents and employees had to say about the place they call home. “There really wasn’t a place they left untouched.”

The reason the other community is remaining a secret for now is because towards the end of the month Whitecourt will be sending a delegation to that community where it will do the same type of exploring. Such a big secret was a little hard to keep but the three who knew managed to remain very tight-lipped.

“We never shared with any of our staff or any of our businesses on the fact that we would be having mystery shoppers coming through and it’s nice to have that unbiased review on your community where people don’t know that they were mystery shopped. It gives a true reflection on where you need to improve. Every community and every business can improve. We have a fantastic place to live but we can always make it a bit better.”

Though she will have to wait until after the Whitecourt delegation has had a chance to visit the mystery town, Mayor Chichak said she has received a little bit of information on how Whitecourt did. “There definitely are some areas that we need to improve and work on. Some were complete successes and some others did show room for improvement.” She said they hope to report on the project at the Economic Forum in March.

Mayor Chichak said she is excited to know how complete strangers rate Whitecourt on a scale of one to 10. “Were we average at a five or did we rock it at an eight, do we still have room for improvement, and were we stellar at a lot of the different categories? I’m just anxious to see where we were overall. How did we do?”