When considering all of the valuable ways to strategically use mystery shopping to build brand loyalty among your customer base, evaluating the effect of additional staffing on service levels and sales is the first thing to come to mind.
Let’s peek in on a familiar scenario to see how one top retailer handled this need:
A well-known women’s retailer wanted to test the effect of adding additional payroll hours on service levels and sales. They focused their attention on the fitting room area, as that was a prime opportunity for up selling their customers. The additional payroll dollars allowed a dedicated associate to assist in the fitting room at all times.
In order to evaluate the impact on service levels, the stores were mystery shopped every week. A modified version of the client’s standard retail shop was created with a number of additional fitting room related questions.
The weekly shops were alternated as follows:
-One week the shop occurred during the up staffing period
-The following week the shop occurred when no up staffing was in place
The expectation was that the service scores would be compared over a six-month period, combined with sales analysis versus last year.
Without this retailer’s attention to studying this issue, both growth and dollars could have been significantly delayed. Honing in on exactly what needed to be measured, then designing a program to effectively measure the data helped this retailer stamp their name on service and quality for thousands of loyal customers.
