As we’ve talked about before, the best users of mystery shopping programs offer additional methods to capture data that can be used to make necessary improvements. The reason why these different strategies work together to create such a comprehensive program is because they offer a variety of perspectives that, when combined, give great insight into the total customer experience. For the most part, mystery shopping programs look at the customer experience from the viewpoint of the customer and that of the store staff.
Mystery shopping focuses on staff performance- how well the company executes its operations and customer service objectives based on the fact based observations of the mystery shopper. Since shoppers are given detailed guidelines in advance on what to look for, mystery shoppers typically visit the store 1 ““ 4 times each month and focus on quality control, training and incentives. Additionally, Mystery Shoppers are recruited based on demographic profiles that closely match those of a company’s real customers. Mystery Shoppers are paid to be very objective and detailed, reporting on specific visits or calls and observing 100% accurately the precise #’s of customers and employees in-store, service times down to the second, what was in or out of compliance during the visit.. Each evaluation is then used independently to make improvements to operations and training. It is not difficult to see how much valuable information can be gathered from the mystery shopper’s point of view of employee performance.
However, customers have a completely different vantage point- a thoroughly subjective one ““ and many see employee performances in a completely different light. This is where customer surveys, 50-150 per month on average, become very important, measuring what the customers really think and feel about the company, its services, its products and its marketing. Customer surveys are not based on fact; they’re based on individual opinion, but this opinion is as valuable as a mystery shopper’s report. Generally, Customers are sampled at random from a qualified population to extrapolate results that represent a significantly larger population. Encouraged to freely express their highly subjective opinions, individual surveys are not predictive of every customer’s experience unless sufficient samples are taken and results analyzed in aggregate. Although customers lack the pre-arranged guidelines and objective focus of the mystery shopper, customers aren’t dummies. They’re not afraid to express their opinions on whether there were enough employees available to serve customers, if service times were adequate, and whether other criteria met their standards. Customer’s attention spans are typically short, limiting the details that can be gotten, but that does not make the information any less valuable. The best mystery shopping programs combine the viewpoints, perceptions and facts from both sides of the register, so to speak, for a complete picture of the customer experience.
