Using Mystery Shopping to Keep Up with Technology

As we’ve seen over the past few weeks, in the business world, keeping up with technology can be challenging. It is also vital. There’s no escaping the future, and apparently the future is all about technology. The question now is: how can businesses stay up to date with the ever-changing landscape technology creates for the customer service experience? One suggestion? By using mystery shopping.

Between 2012 and 2015, I owned and ran a small cafe in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges in Melbourne, Australia. Quaint little town, homey little cafe. The majority of customers were members of the community. It was all about foot-traffic and locals, not so much about tourist travel or city-folk visiting the Hills. That sort of clientele was reserved for the more ‘touristy’ towns further into the mountains, like Belgrave or Kallista.

In the first year, I had a pretty good handle on our customers. We knew what they liked, what they didn’t like, and how best to deliver it to them. By the middle of year two, however, the demographic was changing, the older generation that had made up my customer-base was moving away and being replaced by young families buying their first home. I was lucky, I caught on pretty quick, but two other cafes in my street didn’t, and they were gone by 2013. Tragic, because they were great little hideaways. Our survival had been simple, and I still put it down to one thing: the introduction of free wifi.

Nowadays, it seems like such an obvious thing: don’t all cafes have wifi? But we were the first in our community. While the original demographic didn’t see the need for it, the new one did. They appreciated that we understood – and answered – their need to be connected. This was our survival tactic, a simple adaptation to the change in our customers’ technological needs.

We were lucky, having only a tiny staff and not much of a set-in-stone strategy; the cafe wasn’t a big enough business to be difficult to change. Other businesses – hospitality or otherwise! – don’t have that luxury. Staying ahead of the times, or at the very least keeping up with them, isn’t as easy for everyone as it might be for a small family-owned cafe.

Which brings me back to the question: how can businesses keep up with the constant technological development?

Customers do it. Especially the Millennial customer with his/her latest smartphone and/or tablet. For the most part, customers are keeping abreast of technological changes quite easily, but that makes sense, they’re only one person. A business can’t just upgrade its systems at the drop of a hat, that sort of stuff costs money. Any business worth its salt will likely look at these changes and go ‘fine, we respect that we need to make some changes, but we can’t change everything, what are the priorities?’. This is a practical approach to a very complicated problem.

For businesses, using mystery shopping to keep regular tabs on their customer demographics is an option to stay on top of this. Mystery shoppers are ‘real’ people, so to speak, and they can judge our customer service and experience on a variety of things, including whether or not we are meeting their technological requirements. By using mystery shopping, businesses gain insights into what the ever-changing customer demographic expects to find in terms of technological ‘upkeep’.

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Change in Business: Resistance is Futile

Change. It’s a part of nature, allowing for life to evolve. In essence, change is responsible for our survival. Change is what allows us to adapt to new scenarios, overcome obstacles, and grow as individuals and as societies. And as companies. In the same way that nature forces us to change as a species, change is business is not only inevitable, it’s vital to the survival of the business.

Last week, I talked about the risks involved with company pillarization, a symptom of growth without change. The article discussed how a mature company runs the risk of doing what it’s always done, because that’s the way it’s always done it. Think about those businesses who refused to embrace the Internet because they believed it was a passing fad and would never take off.

This week’s topic is specifically about the concept of change in business, and we’re starting with a favorite source, Vusi Thembekwayo.

“Change is nothing new.”

Change in business is a direct result of the changes happening in the world. Society changes depending on the development of technology.

“Technology is any time you are able to introduce a new variable to the same set of circumstances and create an exponential different result.”

The direct result from society’s technological development is change: change of needs, change of circumstances. And, as society’s needs change, businesses have to change along with it in order to keep up. Building a business to weather the future requires that business to understand the changes being made in the world around it – technological and social. This is especially important for larger and more mature businesses who have ‘settled into’ a way of life.

 

What Thembekwayo is suggesting – and indeed saying outright – is that change is disruptive, but it isn’t anything we haven’t faced before. The difference being, of course, that the more humanity advances our knowledge, the faster changes are forced upon us. Take social media, for example, businesses strive to stay ahead of the growing technology – marketing departments are told that they ‘should really look into that new platform that’s coming out’. Apparently, it’s no longer good enough to just be on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram – oh and Twitter, but that’s been ‘dying’ for a while now, according the experts.

A business isn’t an individual, who can take up Snapchat or Hyper (set to ‘explode’ in 2016 according to Forbes) on a whim and in the blink of an eye. The very nature of a business is that it makes choices a lot slower than a single person, no matter how motivated and enthusiastic the individuals powering that company. Change in business, like change in technology, is never perfect and often faces resistance.

And yet, change is inevitable because humanity is changing rapidly.

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Company Pillarization & Disconnection: Why Change and Adaptation are Vital to Company Growth

As companies grow, they change. It seems obvious, but it’s impossible for any business to stay in that ‘start up’ phase forever. As a company matures, its very nature changes, and often this can cause company pillarization. Originally a cultural and religious concept – based on the Dutch word ‘verzuiling’ – pillarization talks about systematic segregation and alienation of elements of society.

In history, this is best illustrated by the separation between Catholic and Protestant communities in parts of Western Europe after the reformation. Protestant families would only buy from Protestant grocers, while Catholics would only go to Catholic vendors. Society was split across its religious lines in such a way that that was as little interaction as possible between the two elements even though those elements were part of the same, larger community.

We start to see company pillarization in more mature companies. These businesses have developed strategies and policies in their start-up phase, or they have set down strategies and plans afterward. The result is that many of these businesses rely on strategies designed years earlier, based on scenarios and circumstances of that time. One of the problems that can arise from this is company pillarization.

Company Pillarization: The 3 Big Areas of Concern

Communication

One of the first things to break down in a company pillarization scenario. Pillarization creates a disconnect between departments, allowing them to grow distant and focus only on their own tasks. As a result, inter-company, cross-departmental communication is difficult and occasionally non-existent.

Responsibility

A direct result of the breakdowns in communication, keeping track of responsibilities becomes difficult. When company pillarization occurs, departments – and their individual team members – become entrenched in only their own tasks. Even as disconnection begins to occur in communications, a disconnection happens between the tasks and the bigger picture. That leads to a disinterest in taking responsibility or ownership over cross-departmental projects.

Engagement

When a department is disconnected from the company as a whole, the members of that department suffer from the same disassociation. People get drawn in, choosing ‘sides’ with their own department rather than with the company as a whole. This, combined with the breakdown in communications and growing sense of lack of responsibility leads to a downturn in employee engagement. Employees no longer feel connected with anything but their work, or, at best, their department and this impacts the company as a whole.

Overcoming Company Pillarization

Overcoming divisions in any organization can be difficult. Particularly if these divisions have grown subtly over time. The first step is always to recognize that there is a problem. This is something that companies can find difficult to admit; it may be construed as a failure in the eyes of stakeholders, but without this admission there can be no resolution.

In the end what it all comes down to is the disconnection between people, departments and the company as a whole. This can be the result of a number of things such as the company has outgrown its management, the company’s culture isn’t moving with the direction of its employees (in terms of socialisation opportunities), and possibly just the general style of work – perhaps the products that the company is now creating aren’t as interesting as they were before. The disconnection between the company and its individuals is the end result of all these issues.

In order to overcome company pillarization, then, companies have to reconnect with their employees and vice versa. It’s a two-way street.

One of the factors that can help address the issue of communication, for starters, is to take a look at the physical distances between departments. If they are housed on different floors or even different buildings, then face-to-face communication becomes less likely. While not always possible, bringing departments closer together has the potential to help resolve this issue.

Other tried and true ideas is to sit down and take a serious look at current HR Policies: do they reflect the current needs of employees or have things changed? If the company no longer has the best interests of its employees at heart then this is a good place to start looking. Similarly, it’s a good chance to give employees opportunities the chance to express themselves. This will generate information to help bridge the gaps on an individual level and will hopefully improve on issues of engagement and responsibility.

Onwards and Upwards

Many people compare businesses to sharks: when they’re not moving forward they’re sinking. This may not apply to every business on the face of the planet, but it’s often used as a generalization. It applies here too: if a business isn’t addressing issues that are causing breakdowns in responsibility, engagement and communication then what’s the point? It’s fair to say that while not all companies can be compared with sharks, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue any company not addressing its internal issues is heading for the  bottom of the ocean.

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High Employee Turnover: Impacts, Reasons, and Solutions

Many companies, particularly in the retail industry, face a high turnover of staff. In any industry, high employee turnover is a problem, even more so in industries where the majority of employees are on the frontline and deal with customers directly.

High employee turnover comes with a host of issues, reasons, and several solutions. We’ve boiled it down to the basics:

The 2 Big Issues

1. No Consistency for the Customer

Customer service has many facets. One of the elements that help improve customer satisfaction is consistency: people enjoy familiarity. A customer who walks into his or her favourite shoe shop and is greeted by a familiar face – that of a long-time employee – who remembers their preferences and needs is a loyal customer.

In the retail industry, this is tricky; many employees view retail as an entry job – one that will springboard them through some work experience into a ‘real job’. Gone are the days when walking into a small community fashion shop would earn you a personal greeting and a ‘…how did that dress work for your son’s graduation?’. Customers crave that type of personalised interaction – it makes them feel valued – but it is incredibly difficult to give them when high employee turnover is in play; it’s not exactly possible to train new employees in individual customer profiles.

2. Continuous, Inefficient, and often Expensive Training Requirements

With high employee turnover, companies face the issue of having to train newcomers constantly and consistently. As a result, training models are often designed and used without adapting them to changing situations. Why waste time building new models when this batch of employees is just going to leave anyway? In a sense, many businesses give up because they can’t keep up: it becomes more time-efficient to just let new employees use the current, un-personalised training system.

This is where new employees face ancient PowerPoint presentations with outdated information. They see that the company hasn’t invested any time or energy into these training packets and switch off – why should they engage with this material if the company hasn’t? And so the cycle continues.

The 2 Big Reasons behind High Employee Turnover

1. No Engagement and Motivation

We touched on this a little already: if an employee doesn’t feel engaged with a business for whatever reason, they’re going to get bored. Employee loyalty, like customer loyalty, isn’t something that just happens: it has to be earned over time. This means that businesses have to put in the effort to engage and motivate their staff.

2. No Support or Management

One of the biggest reasons why high employee turnover occurs is due to management issues. Management, as most of us know, is an artform. A good manager is worth their weight in gold; a bad one much less so. Bad management, or no management, will send employees packing without a backwards glance. Employees want – and need! – to feel like they are being supported; they don’t want to feel undervalued or overworked. It is a manager’s job to dispense advice, constructive criticisms, and compliments in such a way that is most helpful to the employee.

The Solution

There are several ways in which a business can tackle high employee turnover. What it really boils down to is communication.

Understanding employee expectations, requirements, and issues before they come into play is vital to taking control of any employee relationship. This line of communication goes both ways, of course, allowing for a company to relay its expectations, rules, and goals to its employees so that no one operates blindly.

Several months ago, we discussed the importance of an evolving HR policy. A good HR policy will accurately reflect the needs of both the business and the employee – allowing for a dialogue between the two. This is the main, vital thing to help kerb high employee turnover.

The Inevitable

Sometimes, however, it isn’t possible to manage high employee turnover; sometimes, it’s just a fact of life. It is impossible to control everything. A company can go out of its way to increase employee engagement and motivation, and this will certainly help with the issue, but it might not be possible to stop high turnover completely. This can be due to the nature of the work – perhaps it is a high-stress job that people simply can’t handle for too long; or maybe it’s an easy entry-level job that young adults use to break into the workforce.

It’s not always possible to fix high employee turnover, but even in those cases where it remains an issue, it is possible to work with it rather than despite it.

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