Hi everyone,

After spending a couple weeks reading these forums and test driving my audio equipment, I did my first shop. I chose a furniture shop because I enjoy shopping for furniture and feel comfortable in that situation. It was about 50 miles from my home as I take an evening class near the shop so why not kill two birds with one trip, right?

Holy cow! The shop itself was a breeze. Being able to record took the pressure off of trying to remember each and every tiny detail. But the report! Yikes! After leaving the shop, I went to a Starbucks so I could use their wifi to complete the report. Since I had the print version of the report, I went through my audio recording and answered the yes/no questions on the report and used a word processing program to type up the "comment" type answers. It took me two hours!

And then I viewed the report online....... To my horror, each and every yes/no question required a comment. Most of the narrative I had prepared was going to need changes and I was going to have to write so much more. By this time I had to go to class. Drove home after class and arrived there at 9 pm. Spent the next 2 1/2 hours completing the report online and barely made the midnight submission deadline.

Obviously, if I had done the report online from the beginning instead of trying to answer the questions on the printed version first, I would have gotten it done in 2 1/2 to 3 hours instead of 4 1/2. Did I just choose an overy ambitious shop for my first time? Or do reports normally take several hours to complete? Does this get easier? Any suggestions for better time management? I would like to be able to do several shops during the day while I'm in this area before taking my night class, but don't see how that would be possible as I'd never get the reports submitted on time.

Comments and suggestions are very welcome and appreciated Thanks!

There is a learning curve for every survey form. My rule of thumb is that the third time a do a particular report, it will take about one-third as much time as the first time.

Also, you may also actually be slowing yourself down by listening to the whole recording before entering the survey, if it is a long recording. You may want to consider working on remembering more and more detail and using the recording only to skip to parts of it that you are unsure about.

As to the long narrative of "the whole picture" at the end of many reports.... This can often be 90% made up from "cut and paste" of your comments from the earlier short comments sections of the report. That is a huge time saver.

It does sound like you took a rather detailed shop as your first venture, and, yes, it definately gets easier. You may want to do a "mock shop" of that furniture shop (i.e., go to a different store and repeat the assignment, without having a real assignment), working without listening to the recording afterwards. Some hints for remembering things:
When the sales agent (SA) greets you, greet them in "mirrow image." They are "Hello. How are you?" You say, "Hello. I am fine." That is as good as repeating their greeting. Now that you have "heard" it twice, you are more likely to remember it. For the same reason, you can "mirror" or actually repeat vebatim some of what the SA says to you that you need to use in the report. They say, "The Ultrsuede is very poplular becasue it is easy to clean." You reply, "Oh, the Ultrasuede is easy to clean. Hmmm."

Walking out of the store, murmer to yourself the description of the SA, if that is required.

You will be amazed at how much more you remember in time to make notes in your car (out of sight of the site) right after the shop!

Enjoy.

Congratulations on surviving your first shop! Well done!

Without knowing who the furniture store is it is difficult to say if you choose a particularly difficult assignment. It certainly sounds very cumbersome and I have never spent that long on a report. In fact I don't think I've ever spent more than an hour at most on a report and these days 30 minutes is about my longest. I think if I spent that long on a report I'd give up! However it is true that as you do more you get faster and wales gave you some really great advice there. Good luck on your future assignments!

Also, be sure to save the narrative you write as a copy/paste into Word. I just save mine in the same folder as my pics from the shop. This provides a record you can use for questions from the MSC and for future MSC applications (be sure to change details to provide privacy!!). Also, if I do the same shop again, I start with the narrative that is done for my narrative sample which gives me the format that the MSC likes (assuming that the previous shop went okay). Change the details (address, time, employee name, department, etc. and the order you did things to be correct for the new location and submit. It takes much less time for later shops than that first one.

Thank you Walesmaven, Jpgiham and Lbw1000!

It is very helpful to know that this shop was out of the norm as far as the length of time it took to complete the report. I think I went into perfectionist mode and wanted to check and double check the recording to make sure my narratives were correct. Nothing like second guessing yourself in Starbucks for two hours Plus, I really liked the sales associate and wanted to give him a favorable report. He neglected to do/say some things his employer specifically asked about on the report. This led to further scouring of the audio to see if maybe he mentioned these items in "spirit." Sadly, he did not and I had to give a few answers indicating these omissions.

Your suggestions and tips are all very helpful. Thanks for taking the time to help a newbie out I will definitely put them to use next time I shop.

I find for shops that I know involve a lot of narrative that if I just type out the interaction in Word, I usually hit what is needed in that and then cut and paste into the various questions, then I fill out the survey. After you do a few of the same shops, you learn what to listen for and it clicks. I've done some furniture shops and their sales process is pretty scripted so I have saved some of the narrative for those shops and use that as a template too. I think the first report for any new shop is always longer.

Thank you, Rims. I like the idea of typing a narrative of the interaction first and then using copy and paste to answer the report questions. I plan on doing a mock shop of another furniture store next week and will give this a try.