Why We Focus on Mystery Shopping

Mystery shopping is an interesting market research tool. Sending in trained mystery shoppers to evaluate and audit the service delivered by the staff is a great way to spot and improve on aspects of the service delivered to your customers.

What makes us love mystery shopping?

1. It’s always about Continuous Improvement.

Every company has standards. Mystery shopping lets us check these standards and whether they are met and delivered a daily basis to the customer. It’s really important that customer service is delivered to the level that is expected of the brand.

Some brands have been associated with great customer service. If one customer were to have a bad experience, it would reflect badly on the brand as a whole. If you’re thinking that one bad experience would not be the end of the world, that may be right. However, if left unchecked a single negative experience can cascade into a negative perspective of that brand. Mystery shopping allows us to check on these situations and help the staff to improve on the service delivered.

Keep in mind that mystery shopping is not limited to customer service checks. For example, it can also be used to check on product acceptance in an internal market, whether internal procedures are being used correctly, or whether training is having the desired impact.

2. Valuable Insights from Customers.

The shoppers that are sent to conduct a mystery shopping program are trained for a given scenario or circumstance. They are sent in to evaluate the store/staff/outlet objectively based on the information given prior to the visit.

To add to that, the shoppers are also well aware that they are there to conduct a mystery visit. This heightens awareness and leads to other discoveries that are not objectively evaluated in a mystery shopping survey. We call these “insights”.

Insights provide valuable information that companies can act on immediately. Whether it’s a positive or negative insight. The power of the information would lead to prompt action to improve on a situation or compliment a staff on a good performance. The latter would serve as a motivational factor, which can also lead to better overall performance.

3. Helping Staff to be more structural in their approach.

What it comes down to is often sitting with the staff and showing them the result of a mystery shopping program and how well they or an outlet have performed.
The positive findings can often boost the morale of the staff. The opposite, however, has a risk of having an adverse effect. So how do you turn a negative into a positive?

Mystery Shopping should never be used as a method to “point the finger” at a staff member
Pointing out to the staff where – in a rehearsed scenario – they went wrong can help them improve their performance. Some companies base the staff’s bonus on these results, and truly that is to the discretion of the company. Explaining what the mystery shopping program is all about, why there was a penalization on the bonus and how to improve to be better next time, may, in turn, negate the negative effects.

This is done through increments. For example, if a staff scored a (hypothetical) 30% on their mystery shopper result. The data shows the areas in which the staff member was weakest. Maybe the staff member did not greet the customer for example. So, through these results, the staff member knows that he/she needs to work on this. Instead of working towards a full 100% score, aim for an improvement on that one section.

Incremental growth is growth that lasts. This month the staff works on approaching, next month on finding out the customers’ need, the following month another aspect. The data is available and the staff is able to improve on this gradually, providing both motivation and growth.
A time will come when staff has assimilated the structure and no longer has to think about the process. The staff then does it naturally in a genuine way, thus improving business performance.

Bonus:

It connects the company to the shoppers.
The shoppers that perform a mystery visit are specifically there for that store. The shoppers put in time and energy to help that store/brand improve. If there is anything in this world that is true in branding, it’s the thoughts and opinions of shoppers. Yes, the shoppers may be paid, but they are there to help a store improve for the long run.

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What Mystery Shopping Can Teach You About Customer Service

Almost everyone in the service industry knows how important it is to listen to the voice of the customer. However, listening is not the same as understanding and businesses often misunderstand the information provided by different customer feedback channels.

You might know that you are doing “OK” in the area of customer service, but you do not have evidence to back that assessment up.

There are different channels that aid to understand how the customer service performance is that can range from first-hand observations to review sites and social media feedback to opinion polls and so on, each of them having specific advantages and disadvantages and each fitting for specific situations and outcomes. One tool that we discuss in more detail today that often is used to evaluate the quality of the customer experience in service industries is Mystery Shopping.

A mystery shopper plays the role of a customer, evaluating service according to a given scenario, working with a checklist of criteria that measure compliance with standards that are set by your own company or an external institution.

Since Mystery Shopping works with checklists, it can be used to measure efficiency. For example, it gives insight in how promptly a customer is greeted and taking a hotel as an example, if greeted by name, and it can give insights in the branch appearance, etc.

With Mystery Shopping, the employees’ behaviour that have the biggest impact on your sales can be analysed. For example, a Mystery Shopper can observe if the employee asked to sign up for a loyalty program or not. Thus, Mystery Shopping shows where the money on training staff should be spent on to improve customer service.

Besides using Mystery Shopping to determine training needs, it is also a useful tool to use after trainings have been completed, as it shows if the training was effective.
Trustworthy companies let their staff know that they will be checked. It thus is a possibility to already let your staff know what they are checked on whilst the Mystery Visits are in progress. For example, in Quarter X, we focus on if our sales employees asked to sign up for a loyalty program. A person that knows what he or she is checked for pays attention to that task and does it more consciously, which will reinforce that behaviour.

You might be of the mind that you can get the same information without a mystery shopping program. Why not just observe your employees? Point of fact: employees always behave better when a supervisor is around. Maybe just ask your customers for feedback! That might is an idea but will not lead to the same results. Customers might give feedback, but they do not focus on relevant issues. Mystery Shoppers are clear on the standards that are expected from your staff and will provide insights how your team is executing to those benchmarks. These observations are not subjective and not compared to previous visits’ to the same or any other store.

Having good customer service is crucial, the Customer Service Report found that „66% of US consumers are willing to spend more money with a company that provides them with excellent customer service, according to Microsoft, while 60% of consumers say they have not completed an intended purchase due to a poor customer service experience.“

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The History of Mystery Shopping

The beginning

Mystery Shopping has been used since the 1940s. Back in those days, it was mostly used in banks and retail stores to check the integrity of employees, such as cash-handling procedures were carried out correctly.

Since then mystery shopping has come a long way. From a few individual private investigators performing visits, to the massive market research firm, and to the specialised mystery shopping company using it as a tool for both internal and external uses.

The 70ies

It was in the 1970s when mystery shopping really started to catch on. Since then it has continued to evolve into a multi-billion dollar industry that serves different areas within all kinds of industry sectors.

In the 70ies, already 25-35% of all banks with over $300 million in deposits conducted some type of mystery shopping. In the banking sector, mystery shopping was mostly used as a benchmark program with one or two-year follow-ups. This way, it was difficult to spot changes or to tell what effected that change as there were no motivational programs in place that encourage change.

The 70ies was also the decade where marketers realised the importance of developing a sales culture and, consequently, started to observe the sales performance. Mystery Shopping started to use monitoring devices for customer service and tracking sales behaviours and skills.

The 80ies

In the 80ies, it was the quality of service that took the focus. Mystery Shopping, as well as customer satisfaction surveys, became the industry’s standard for evaluating performance. Those two methodologies combined helped determine what customer’s needs were.

Rather than asking shoppers questions like “was the customer service representative pleasant?“ as it had been done before, researchers started to ask questions like “did the sales agent show specific sales/service behaviours or took specific actions such as offering a business card?” This change was fundamental in growing the industry and allowed for the eventual rise of the specialised mystery shopping company.

Today

Researchers in the past were less concerned about sample size, demographics, regression, analysis, or statistical modelling. Today those factors are part of everyday mystery shopping programs. The operation of a successful mystery shopping program depends on solid data analysis.

For example, when planning a shop, some businesses want to focus on key demographic, others want all demographics to be considered as their business serves a diverse population. As a result, they want to be sure that their customer service address that diversity.
Besides research methodologies, systems and tools have advanced as well. Previously the industry relied on the word of the mystery shopper, today techniques to gather data range from questionnaires to video equipment.

However, mystery shopping is not an automated process. While the processes are more standardised and integrity still is checked, the main focus of mystery shopping today is evaluating the quality of service, compliance with regulations, and to gather specific information about products and services.

For this, a specialised mystery shopping company will usually include both subjective and objective questions in questionnaires. The objective questions provide hard data, while the subjective ones allow shoppers to give context to their overall experience.

The industry

According to the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA), mystery shopping is estimated to be a US $ 1.5 billion industry with over 1.5 million active mystery shoppers.
The growth of the industry can also be attributed to the Internet. It’s not only easier to recruit shoppers and for people to find open opportunities, it also enabled the submitting of reports electronically. The turn around for assessments and information is much quicker, businesses thus can start implementing changes sooner.

Conclusion

Customer service will remain in the main focus for many companies, as it is a good way to distinguish from competitors. Today, mystery shopping has become an essential method to plan and develop effective strategies. Data gathered using mystery shopping helps to keep the business performance up, thus directly impact economic growth. All in all, the mystery shopping industry future looks promising.

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10 Mystery Shopping Benefits for Retail

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If you think your business needs more customers to have higher profit, you’re wrong! You need your customers to return. Are your customers willing to drive past a closer and maybe even cheaper competitor, just to come back to you? Mystery Shopping is a research tool that helps your retail brand find out how to get retain customers. Why? Because you need to inspect what you expect! There are many advantages of mystery shopping. We’ve narrowed it down to 10 mystery shopping benefits for retail industry businesses:

Mystery Shopping Benefits:

1. Increase Efficiency:

How? Mystery shopping can be used to monitor and measure service performance and to see if standards are met. At the moment, that responsibility might fall to individual store managers, but they might be so familiar with their stores that blind spots have formed. Mystery Shopping allows you to get the big picture as well as the individual specifics from each region, store, or even individual employee. Once you’ve got those reports, you can act on them to increase efficiency.

2. Helps you to get feedback from the customer’s perspective:

Use mystery shopping programs to get reliable, specific, and quality feedback from a customer point of view. This can help highlight specific areas you might want to test, such as experience, satisfaction, and brand perception.

3. Gives you feedback about staff performance:

What sales techniques are staff using? Do staff sell actively or passively? How did the employee handle a customer complaint? Is the staff professional, has product knowledge and cares about the customer? Did the staff acknowledge the customer entering the store by smiling, greeting, or was the customer ignored? And so on!

Shows you how your employees act when managers are not around. Is the store kept clean when no manager is around? Are employees using their mobile phones in front of the customers, are standards and legal requirements met?

4. Monitors facility conditions as perceived by the customer:

Is the store neat? Or is the store layout set up as instructed by headquarters? Is the best-selling promotional table empty the Saturday right before Christmas because the sales agent had no time to set it up? Mystery shopping programs are all about answering these types of questions, specifically aimed at the needs and issues faced by the retail industry.

5. Tests the functionality of internal procedures and SOPs:

Sometimes, businesses implement top-down standards and procedures that may not have the desired effect when they reach store level. One of the mystery shopping benefits for retail is that businesses can use mystery shopping to test how new operational procedures actually work – or, indeed if they work at all – on the store-level.

6. Serves as a motivational tool for your employees:

Using incentives and reward programs as part of a good mystery shopping program can ensures positive customer relationships on the frontline.

7. Makes your employees aware of what is important in serving customers:

When mystery shoppers come into the store, they act like real customers. They’re trained to ask specific questions and look for certain things in behaviour, products, and the store itself. The simple act of having someone ask those questions – and later, be able to highlight the areas in need of improvement in the next store meeting, for example – can help employees become aware of how the customer wants to be serviced.

8. Benchmark competitors:

Competition in the retail industry is fierce. Knowing how the competition performs, what they are doing, what behaviour is towards customers, or how their store layout works can help you find out where you stand and can help you improve!

9. Identifying training needs:

All of the above elements can lead to an awareness of areas that need improvement, particularly in staff training. How can we become more efficient? How could the employee be of more help to the customer? This then enforces employee integrity and knowledge.

10. Improved Customer Retention:

Every single one of the about retail mystery shopping benefits lead to the super benefit: Customer Retention. Every improvement you make in your business as a result of the actionable insights gained from a mystery shopping program lead to better customer service, which, in turn will lead to customers choosing your company over the competition every. Single. Time.

Still think that mystery shopping is too subjective? Mystery shopping is all about data: solid questions, trained mystery shoppers, and solid answers aimed at generating actionable insights. These insights then form the basis for your business’ next move forward.

In the retail industry? Want to know more about mystery shopping benefits for retail industry businesses? We’re always happy to answer any questions you might have:

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