Lately, my shops are taking a long time to fill about. The MSC's requesting step by step narratives and it is taking so much time. I am usually spending over an hour (at the least) doing shops. Is this typical?? Help me, how is everyone doing theirs? Am I too detailed?

Lisa

What specific kind of shop? Some of them who want those detailed step-by-step paint-a-picture narratives, I take an hour, too.

Depends on how well I like the shop and how well it pays, if I do those again. Because some things, I don't mind writing a narrative like that.

What I *don't* like, is where they ask for a narrative like that, in response to the very same question re-stated about four different ways. And don't want you to repeat yourself!

You could ask the MSC if you're being too detailed. Sometimes they'll tell you that you are. But if you wonder if you're giving too much, you could either ask... or just try to be more succinct next time and see what happens.

keep giving less until they tell you they are not giving
enough.

I did 33 shops yesterday. To enter all of takes under 3
hours.

I did 3 and it took like 33 hours! LOL! Okay, it felt like 33. I had a fine dining restaurant and two ultra-luxury shops. Two of them require a brief narrative after every comment. After awhile the details requested for the narrative become redundant.

Techman01, what kind of shops did you do? I did a pizza one that paid awesome and took maybe ten minutes other than that they are pretty involved. I guess it is the learning curve.

Lisa

@ techman ~ Your situation is not "the norm" though. If I remember correctly, the majority of your shops require little to no commentaries at all. You can't apply that mentality to a high-end dining or hotel shop.

I have a monthly route of shops that do require a short answer for every question and the reports take me about 15 minutes including the required photo.

I usually average a half hour per shop for most reports, depending on how many pictures or documents I have to upload. A few I can do in 10 minutes (banks for Maritz) and car shops or restaurants with narrative take about an hour. One dining shop I did for the first time a couple months back took twice as long for me to write up as the time I spent in the restaurant.

The secret is to balance your day's work to only have one or two narrative shops, one or two really quick easy ones, and the others "normal" shops that take 20-30 minutes. And it goes quicker the more of a certain type of shop you have done. I probably took an hour for my first bank shop because I was having to look at the pictures to see if I had the various kinds of brochures and what they were called. Gas stations are the same way, since you have to identify what kind of pumps sometimes and whether the POP's are current. But once you know what you're looking for, they go much faster.

Shop2Live if I paint my house in FL green
and my house in NY bright yellow
what color would you paint yours?

Lisa,

I create a Cheat Sheet in my word program for each shop that I do frequently. I save it by Assignment Name, and they are saved in a folder under their MSC. For example, I now have eleven Cheat Sheets under the folder IntelliShop.

My Cheat Sheet is divided into sections for each narrative, and in red, I have the Yes/No questions in red, since the narratives require that you explain your Yes/No questions. Examples of some questions are "Salesman did/did not explain financing offers. Salesman did/did not explain promotional offers. Salesman did/did not offer a test drive." Etc. These are your marks to hit, explaining the Yes/No questions in your narrative.

When I am about to enter a report, I pull up my Cheat Sheet, make a copy, and start typing in the copy. I quickly hit all of my marks one after another, and then delete what is in red. When there is no more red left, I have hit all of my marks, verifying my Yes/No answers, and then I move on and add a few additional sentences explaining anything else that happened in that particular interaction for that narrative. I then move on to the next narrative on my Cheat Sheet, doing the same.

When there is no more red left, I'm done. Each narrative section takes me about a minute, doing it this way. When I am done, I copy and paste each narrative section back into the report form on the MSC's website.

It takes me about ten minutes to create each Cheat Sheet, but saves me 30 minutes, at least, when typing a report, as I'm not having to scroll up to look at my Yes/No answers, or constantly proofread to make sure I hit all of my marks. By using a different color, red, for my marks, I can see at a glance what I've covered (now in black) and what's left to be covered (what is still in red.)

Your cheat sheets are a great idea. I spend too much time scrolling up to re-read questions while I'm writing my narratives. All the scrolling is tough on my eyes, too. Sometimes I'll print the report so I can refer to each question more easily, but I try to avoid that if at all possible.

Ain't nobody got time for that!

It really does save me a lot of time. Whenever I take on a new project that I think I'll make a regular thing, I make a Cheat Sheet while I have the report form open, so that it saves me time in future assignments.

Yeah, I think I am too detailed. I actually include entire conversations if I can remember. Is that too much? I have performed over 40 shops since beginning last month and never been corrected. My first shop I was reminded to be objective not subjective.

Lisa

Yes, actually.

Just the gist of conversations, and not necessarily all of them. Only ones that are specifically pertinent to the questions, and only if they were particularly influential in your findings.

Unless, of course, they're *asking* for actual conversations. I've only had ones where they wanted word-for-word on the greeting and parting remarks. And, like, one other specific key remark.