National Clothesline

A mystery shopper unmasked himself and gave an account of his experiences at cleaners in the Dallas, TX, area at the Southwest Drycleaners Association convention in Ft. Worth.

The mystery shopper turned out to be Terry Spear, who as a former drycleaner and past president of SDA, is a man who knows his drycleaning. He visited discount, mid-range and upscale cleaners, always bringing with him garments that had “issues.” Overall, he rated 70 percent of the cleaners favorable. “Not bad,” he said. “But we could kick it up a notch to bind the customers to us.”

Still, he said, he had a hard time seeing a real difference in quality from the discounters up through the upscale cleaners. And for all those garments that had “issues,” none of the counter people made a note of those issues even when he pointed them out. But then few of the counter people even made eye contact with him and only one in 12 called him by name, even though his name was right there in front of them. Nor did any of the counter people check the order before giving it back to him when he came to pick it up. And none asked if he had any special requirements.

“We’re missing opportunities to get closer to customers by personalizing our service,” he said.

As for the actual work, he rated the stain removal at 80 percent of the cleaners as “OK.” Seventy percent got his request for heavy starch right.

“Customers have a lot of choices,” he warned. “It’s cheaper to keep a current customer than to get a new one.”