There are many factors that work together to make a mystery shopping program successful. However, no matter how much support your program receives from management, it will not be sustainable, consistent and successful without the full participation of your frontline staff.
Mystery shopping programs are an excellent way to measure frontline staff performance, recognize those who are providing stellar customer service and uncover potential services issues that need improvement before they become big headaches. However, a mystery shopping program can be sunk before it even starts due to misaligned expectations.
The MSPA (Mystery Shopping Providers Association) commissioned a study in 2005 to quantify the mystery shopping market. The study conservatively estimated the U.S mystery shopping industry at $600 million and growing (The MSPA now estimates the number to be closer to 800 million), with mystery shopping companies growing at an estimated 11.1% between 2004 and 2005
One of the reasons mystery shopping has gotten a bad rap is because of mystery shopping providers who simply don’t provide programs that speak to the total customer experience.
How actively do your sales associates conduct follow-through selling? Mystery shopping can help you objectively assess compliance with selling guidelines, utilizing trained shoppers to visit your stores and observe how guidelines are followed. Shoppers are sent into your stores with a list of observables (cleanliness of the store, attitude of the sales associates, etc.) and a list of actions (approached by an associate, had additional merchandise suggested, etc.). After shopping your store, these professionals accurately document their experience and the extent to which they saw each observable and received each action.
Increase Sales By Improving the Customer Experience
Sales strategies and selling themes developed at the corporate level are often not executed at the store level. Most chain executives are so busy and immersed in their jobs that they fail to objectively audit the real customer experience delivered at the store. Sometimes headquarters personnel do not have enough time to conduct store visits and, if they do, it is rare that they actually experience a visit the same way customers do. It is astounding how little most retailers spend on measuring and managing how customers really feel while shopping in their stores.
How Does It Feel To Be Your Customer?
Customer satisfaction surveys provide an accurate view of the customer’s perspective. Satisfaction surveys are conducted by interviewing a sample of your customers to determine their perceptions of your stores and sales associates. Rather than compliance (mystery shopping’s realm) customer satisfaction identifies perceptions – how your customer feels.
The result of a properly conducted and implemented customer satisfaction program is a store-level action plan defining the key drivers of your business – what most needs to be improved to increase your sales.
And that’s how you define the true customer experience.
No doubt you’ve had the experience of traveling along the highway with a rumbling stomach when, all of a sudden, there’s a billboard advertising a juicy, mouthwatering, cheesy hamburger, available within seconds at the fast food joint only one short exit away. Agreeing with your stomach that it sure looks good, you speed up a bit to get there faster, dreaming of splashing it all down with a cold drink.
But as you get ready to devour your meal-in-a-box, reality hits. This burger looks nothing like the picture. In fact, it looks more like a two-year-old slapped it together from pieces of other burgers. You, my friend, have just experienced one of the underlying themes shoppers complain about most often: a disconnect between a brand’s image and the actual customer experience.
A comprehensive mystery shopping program uses a combination of components that work synergistically to develop the vital data store managers need to effect change. One of those components is IVR (interactive voice response).
Unfortunately, some IVR vendors have chosen to position IVR surveys as a replacement for mystery shopping. This is erroneous, since these approaches provide different types of data, one based on subjective recollection and the other based on objective observation.
If you’re using surveys to measure employee behaviors, are you asking the right kinds of questions? Are your questions objective or subjective? When it comes to mystery shopping surveys, how you ask is almost more important than what you ask. Mystery shoppers provide objective observation, as opposed to subjective opinion (customer satisfaction surveys). Asking objective questions will deliver more consistent, measurable results. This approach also provides clear, actionable training indications, helping associates to understand which behaviors need to be modified to improve scores, and ultimately, business results.
Is cost keeping you from collecting information that leads to higher conversions? Information programs can cost much less than you’d expect– in some cases, as little as $35 per store.
Consider the following two cases:
Case 1. A national retailer recently increased its budget for an audit of its customer experience, moving from quarterly to monthly measurements because it was able to see definitive ROI from the insights it gained. Spending just $35 per store per month on its mystery shopping program turned out to be “peanuts” when information gathered allowed associate performance and sales to be improved.
$420 a year per store to increase sales turned out to be a bargain. Compare the costs of new fixtures or carpeting. What payback do they offer in comparison? Consider the cost of the 82% of your customers who walk out without making a purchase.>
Unfortunately, too many CFOs look at expenditures from a direct-cost basis without considering the net cost. They fail to see that dollars spent to improve the customer experience drive their top and bottom lines. Expenditures on improving the customer experience are investment dollars, not expense dollars.
Case 2. Another national retailer is stepping up to the plate, even in these uncertain times, by implementing customer and employee feedback systems. The retailer’s objective is to improve their shoppers’ experiences by listening to reactions from actual customers and sales associates. The retailer has commissioned an IVR-driven customer satisfaction program and a web-based employee feedback program. The cost for both of these feedback systems is less than $800 per location annually.
Combining all programs from these two retailers (mystery shopping, customer satisfaction, and employee feedback) totals about $1,200 a year per store, and gives the retailer a 360° business view, providing dramatic payback potential in the toughest retail economic climate in 15 years.
The message couldn’t be clearer. Reductions in programs and information systems leave today’s retailers vulnerable to competition and prevent an understanding of the more demanding mindset of customers. What’s needed is an aggressive commitment to continued information programs, along with complementary data services to fortify retailers for the long haul. Cutting auditing and feedback programs to shore up the bottom line will ultimately have the opposite effect. Partnering with an organization that assists you in communicating the information and in building action plans to foster system-wide improvements, as well as asking the right questions, will deliver the best experience for your customers.
Even in today’s marketplace, customers still have money, but they will become more selective – and will spend that money with retailers who offer them the better experience, no matter what.
Further proof that the scope and advantage of mystery shopper programs extends well beyond that of a perfunctory customer service evaluation is their effectiveness as a tool for conducting competitive audits - and for building a body of competitive intelligence that can be used to inform your own product, staffing and service-based decisions as well as long-term strategic development.
