I am a new shopper and am just completing my 14th shop (mainly retail, involving buying something). Something I find I really struggle with is when there are questions and narratives needed but they don't follow the flow of the shop. For example I am writing about a jewelry store shop and in a narrative it asks you to recall all the open ended questions you were asked during your entire visit. Do you list the questions in a bullet type format with no reference to the conversation before or after or do you try and give them context? Giving them in context is difficult because they happened at many different points in the shop.

The survey asks about product care & maintenance & warranty along with asking how you were advised or guided. Product care was discussed early in the shop and not when I was paying attention to how I was advised or guided. Combining both of them in the narrative even as separate paragraphs seems awkward. The survey is asking me to include both of these things in the same narrative. It made sense when I read the shop guidelines before the shop but it happened in a completely different way during the actual shop.

And...what do you say to get around using the associates name or she/he to start every sentence? (I know, you're not supposed to start a sentence with and)

I am sure you get better at this the more you do but if anyone has suggestions I would really appreciate it.

I haven't done the shop you're talking about so I have no idea what they want. The best thing to do is call your scheduler (if you can) and try to get some guidance there. If you're up against a deadline, I'd finish the shop the best I could and contact someone at the company tomorrow. If you have a deadline tonight it's important to meet that deadline. If what you write is not what they want, they can reset the shop and let you re-work it. I wouldn't be inclined to bullet point or list the questions if you're inside a narrative block on the report. I could be wrong, but I think what they want is just a general discussion that covers all the open ended questions. As long as you write a clear report and include all the information they want, you can't go too far astray. They'll work with you.

I have not done this shop either but what I generally do is to make myself a cheat sheet by reading through the questionnaire before the shop and writing down the questions I will need to gather data for listing some of the salient points they want to know about. So for your shop I might have written down "Open ended questions asked what, when, how" and leave a space so that after the shop I will go through in my head or use what ever notes I might have to fill those in from where ever they occurred during the shop. Leave a space to write in your answer then go on to the next question...which might be titled care, maintenance, warranty, advice.
Many questions recur in almost every shop such as restroom, cleanliness etc. For those just note discrepancies.
No conversation is going to go the same way each time so you will rarely have the questions come up in order of your conversation.
If this report is structured so that there are small narratives after each question then usually what they want there is just the answer to the question asked at that point. It does not need to be put into context but it generally needs to be written in full sentences and not as bullet points. So you might say the salesperson asked you what xxx, how xxx and where xxx during your conversation. They just want to know how the sales person handled finding out what your needs were. When there is a narrative box at the bottom of the page that asks for the story of the shop that is where you might give your answer in order of how things happened.
See if the msc provides a sample report somewhere on the site and take a look at how the sample is done and then follow that.

What you are experiencing is common with too many reports. The evaluated associates never seem to the follow the shop flow It can make for a disjointed report and is the reason my preference is one overall narrative instead of five to seven small narrative sections. All you can do is your best and be sure the required information is there even if it is in an odd spot.

Unfortunately, many shops are like doing live television; but the other party has not been told the plot or seen the script. As you do more shops you will not only be able to start avoiding those where the survey requirements add to this problem but also you will become more adept at telling the story for the shops that you decide to accept. As for starting every sentence with he/she or the associate's name, just remember that we are not writing an essay for a contest. In order to remove/prevent any ambiguity about who was speaking or acting, it will often be necessary to name the source, over and over again. (Only Jane Austin and William Falukner get to leave the readers wondering who the heck was talking or getting out of the carriage.) I do sometimes try to change up the flow by trying something like, "Asked what the soup of the day was, Sally said...." And, by the way, it is considered quite proper in many quarters to start a sentence with "and" or "moreover," when the objective is to emphasize what follows! (Do I hear the sirens of the syntax police as their car nears the corner?)

When doing longer narrative sections, you can avoid the redundancy of using he/she or the associate's name to start sentences by using transitional phrases such as "After shaking my hand, Adam asked me to...." or "Following the presentation, she thanked me...".

I try to answer the questions exactly as they're asked. If you're asked to give all the open-ended Qs you were asked, just type them in the section w/o regard to context. I do not do it with bullet points, but I don't know that it's a bad idea, either.

As mentioned above, you'll experience shops where the actual conversation doesn't fit the order of the report narrative. Schedulers know this will happen at times. Just answer the Qs posed in the report with the pertinent details from your conversation and you'll be fine.

It would be helpful to have had a sample narrative. In its absence, if there are no specific guidelines for the narrative, I would write it chronologically. I would not use bullet points, rather tell the story. Regarding using the same name, or he/she over and over, I also try to switch it up. Some clients do not want the associate's name used at all. Doesn't necessarily make it easier, as you're just substituting "associate" for the proper name.

You will do fine. If there's no communication from the scheduler, just do your best. You're a new shopper, trying to do it right. You're allowed a learning curve.

i'm tired, shops all day , but, if I'm understanding you (prob not), I write up the complete visit in detail. Then I cut and paste into each section.. Does that help?

I think simply a list of open ended questions would work. For this shop, it might be too long of a narrative to put all the questions in context.

I don't think it matters chronologically when you were advised/guided and when you learned about product care/warranty. It seems they just want to know if it happened or not.

Hopefully you already resolved these issues. Let us know what the scheduler said.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2015 02:28AM by nilennovy.

Sometimes I will write a conversation like a script. For example (a totally made up scenario):
SA: Where will you be wearing the blouse you want to buy?
Me: I want the blouse for dressy occasions.
SA: What type of pants or skirt will you wear with it?
Me: I have dressy slacks, but I would like to wear it with a peasant skirt sometimes and maybe with nice jeans.

I don't use that format for the whole narrative, but there are times where a paragraph with "she asked" "I replied" etc. is cumbersome. The script eliminates the need for so many speaker tags.

WOW, what a great bunch of ideas! It is so cool that so many experienced MS are willing to take the time and energy to write a reply and share ideas with a new person. Every one of the above suggestions will be useful to me (and hopefully others). I finished the survey today, using some of the suggestions, and submitted it. I will post the outcome when I know if it was accepted.

I was lucky in that the survey was due in 24 hours instead of 12. I sure like that better. I find reports much easier (and I think much better) if I can enter and start the report when I get home from the shop then, come back to it the next day.

Anybody else who has ideas, please feel free to share. Thanks!

While some prefer to always enter reports right away, for a more intense interaction with a lot of required narrative the following day works better for me. To me it is even more vital when an interaction has gone sideways for some reason. I'm the type that just needs to step away to evaluate my own perceptions before committing them to paper. A good night's sleep sometimes allows me to put an interaction into perspective, allowing for a more objective report. .

Over time you will develop what works best for you, and we all work somewhat differently. I can't get to sleep if I haven't gotten my reports submitted because my head keeps 'chattering' proposed narrative. YUCK! I get it done, sent and over with, then I can doze off without the head talk. Mert likes to get hers written, reread it the following day and then send it after making any changes and corrections. That would absolutely drive me to drink because my head chattering would be even worse about how to change and make it better and yadda yadda yadda.

When there are narrative blocks I tend to work between two screens--one open to the questions, one open to Word to write up the narrative pertinent to the questions in that block. A quick copy/paste and move on. I save often.

I live in a one party state so audio record the shops in case a point is murky in my mind. I like to wait a few hours before submitting, but if I have 24 hours, I have to force myself to get it done about hour 20! I always lose track of time and sometimes go up to 30 minutes past the deadline. I have been very lucky in that regard!