You always attempt to deliver the best-in-class services to attain maximum customer satisfaction and loyalty towards
your brand. But there are times when, even after putting in your best efforts, you find it difficult to attain your
goal. Do you know why? This is probably because you have spent most of your time on your products’ promotion rather than
evaluating your customers’ satisfaction level with your services. Therefore, it is extremely important for brands like
you to get a customer experience evaluation done using programs like mystery shopping and ascertain the right and wrong
in their customer service strategy.
Mystery shopping is an advanced methodology or process that helps evaluate the performance of the employees at a retail
store. This process is carried out by different individuals who are hired to pretend to be a customer at the store and
evaluate their employees’ performance. The performance evaluation is done on the basis of how well the employees are
able to build rapport and convince the shopper to make the purchase. This evaluation is a great tactic to identify the
customer’s perception of a store when they enter it and the experience they had when leaving it. The evaluation report
can then be used to create an improvement plan that may help strengthen the overall customer experience.
Table of Contents
- Implementing A Mystery Shopping Program
- Determine Your Goals
- Know Your Budget
- Choose The Right Mystery Shopping Platform
- Draft Specific Questions
- Establish Shopper Guidelines
- Consider Your Shoppers’ Advice
- Benefits of Mystery Shopping Program For A Brand
- Detailed Insight Into Customer Experience
- Conduct of Company’s Employees
- Identifying Training Needs
- Boost Customer Retention
- Monitoring Of Service Quality Delivery
Implementing A Mystery Shopping Program
A mystery shopping program is implemented to develop an improved understanding of the ways in which a better customer
experience can be delivered. But what matters the most is finding the right way to get it done within your budget. While
many might think that outsourcing it to an external team is the best deal, your in-house team can also execute the
process if planning is done precisely.
Following are a few simple steps that can assist you in implementing an effective mystery shopping program for your
organization. These include:
Determine Your Goals
A mystery shopping program can serve multiple purposes ascertaining common customer concerns, quality of service
delivery, etc. But, knowing the exact goals and purpose of implementing this program can serve as a great help. Identify
factors like your major goal for mystery shopping, your target audience, the information you wish to find and how to use
it. Once done, make sure that these findings are tailored well to your program.
Know Your Budget
Before putting your plan into action, it is important to know the amount you can spend on this particular project. This
is generally based on your goal behind implementing the program, the cost of its management platform, any purchase to be
made and other miscellaneous costs. You can also do a market analysis to know the current market rates so that you may
be in a better position to decide your budget.
Choose The Right Mystery Shopping Platform
With the advent of advanced technology, using the age-old technique of sharing a paper-based questionnaire can lead to a
lot of waste of resources. Therefore, choosing a suitable platform that may assist you in executing your program easily
is always better. Simplifying the process of keying their results for shoppers will also make it easier for them to
generate a report and analyze the same.
Draft Specific Questions
A mystery shopper needs to have a set of questions ready beforehand. Based on the program’s goals, these questions can
be related to aspects like hygiene, visual appeal, employee conduct, and product availability. It is necessary to
structure these questions in an appropriate format, like multiple choice and open-ended, so that the desired inputs can
be collected.
Establish Shopper Guidelines
It is important to let your shoppers understand your level of expectations. Help them understand the right ways to
attain the goals and the guidelines they need to adhere to. Make sure that you are not making the process too
complicated for them or else you might have a very limited number of resources.
Consider Your Shoppers’ Advice
It is good to have your own set of rules and regulations to execute a mystery shopping program. But, there is no harm in
collecting the feedback from the shoppers’ on the job. The suggestions shared by them can be, at times, effective enough
to be implemented and improve the process. For you, it is about getting the best out of your program and attaining the
results that may help mend the overall process.
Meet your CX objective with ease.
Benefits of Mystery Shopping Program for a Brand
Every year, a lot of businesses deal with situations like diminished customer loyalty, dropped customer satisfaction
(CSAT) scores and decreased customer retention. Considering these ups and downs a part of their normal business routine,
there are not many who consider these or design an improvement plan. However, there are a few others who are ready to
spend a part of their revenue on implementing a mystery shopping program and better plan their business strategy.
Implementing a mystery shopping program can benefit a brand in a number of ways, such as:
Detailed Insight Into Customer Experience
A majority of companies are not aware of how their customers think and feel after visiting their stores. This
information can be made easily available by mystery shoppers. Mystery shopping is a smart way to identify the level of
customer service offered by the company and the extent to which the customers are satisfied with your company. The
availability of such information, in turn, assists businesses in understanding their scope of improvement and how they
may attain their desired level of CSAT.
Conduct of Company’s Employees
While it might be difficult for a store to know the way their employees are interacting with their customers, mystery
shoppers can make it easier for them. The mystery shoppers may visit the store and interact with some specific employees
to report their conduct towards customers, especially when their manager is not around. This helps in verifying that all
the employees are performing at the required level and are continuing to deliver an experience like never before.
Identifying Training Needs
Based on the performance of the existing employees, it would be easier for the company to determine the training needs
of prospective employees. The data collected can also be used to identify the required training that should be imparted
to the existing employees to improve their performance, especially those who are not performing as per the set industry
standards.
Boost Customer Retention
Mystery shopping can help improve the customer retention score by identifying the common loopholes in customer service
delivery and ways to overcome these. Delivery of high-quality customer service will not only help in establishing s
positive bottom line for the brand. Still, it will also make it easier to improve the overall customer retention score.
Apart from this, you can also implement some of the best tips to retain repeat customers, such as maintaining regular
customer communication, staying transparent, etc.
Monitoring Of Service Quality Delivery
Once your brand has established a reputation in the market for its service quality, it is important to maintain it. And
this can be done easily by planning a mystery shopping program. The program maintains a close check on the service
quality delivered to the clients and ensures the delivery of optimum service quality in times to come.
Things to Do & Not to Do In Mystery Shopping Program
A mystery shopping program is a standardized method to evaluate the employees’ performance, most commonly at retail
stores. While preplanning the entire program can simplify its execution, there are certain tips that one must keep in
mind when acting as a shopper.
Things to Do:
1. Maintain a good mix of subjective and objective questions.
2. Be clear and specific about your goals and objectives.
3. Customize your reports to meet your business needs.
4. Offer gifts and rewards to employees.
5. Put in your best efforts.
6. Maintain a strong work ethic.
7. Maintain integrity at work.
Things Not To Do:
1. Never ask opinion-based questions, as this might lead to a loss of the program’s credibility.
2. Avoid asking a lot of questions in one go.
3. Do not ask each employee’s name, as this may sound weird.
4. Do not lose your calm and patience.
5. Lack of business/product knowledge.
Take Your Employees’ Performance to the Next Level
Letting your employees undergo a secret investigation via mystery shopping is an excellent way to identify their real
performance level. What they say or how they behave is the same as the way they act with real customers. Therefore, the
data collected using mystery shopping is completely real and should be used to provide feedback to all your employees.
When sharing feedback, managers need to stay cautious and avoid using any names. Doing so might dilute the entire
purpose of the feedback campaign and would not allow the listeners to learn the necessary lesson. Focus on improving
your employees’ performance, and you will definitely be able to attain the anticipated results.
