ICC President & CEO David Rich to Speak at In-Store Marketing Summit
David Rich, President & CEO of ICC/Decision Services, will speak at the sold out In-Store Marketing Summit next week. Appearing with Jim Fuqua, Director of In-Store Experience at SUPERVALU, David & Jim will look at how to measure and impact the true ROI of every program; and how to engage and delight shoppers (and retail partners) every time. Want to know how are you “measuring up” when it comes to executing in-store demos and retail events and who is best in class? David will show examples of who is excelling and who is falling short and why; and will share recent analytics commissioned by ICC/Decision Services exclusively for the In-Store Marketing Institute measuring the in-store experience over a 90-day period in supermarket and mass merchant channels nationwide.
The In-Store Marketing Summit is the premier educational conference for agencies, CPGs, retailers and P-O-P producers looking to improve their retail marketing strategy.
David Rich is the President & CEO of ICC/Decision Services, a privately held company headquartered in New York City serving customers across North America. David has spent close to two decades in the retail and customer experience management and, as President and CEO of ICC, he develops creative solutions for some of the world’s leading retail brands in many of the largest retail vertical markets. ICC/Decision Services offers a wide range of qualitative and quantitative business tools, including mystery shopping, customer feedback and employee satisfaction surveys. Clients include Coach, L.L. Bean, Rite Aid, Eddie Bauer, Foot Locker, Walmart and others. The company is headquartered at 122 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001, U.S.A. Phone: (800) 444-1717. E-mail: info@iccds.com. More information is available at www.iccds.com.
Customer Experience Synonymous with Operating Strategy
When you hear the term “customer experience”, what is the first thing you think of? Many think of marketing or sales, but how many think of operating strategy? Others immediately think of the expense of running a customer service department. What is often missed is the growth potential and stability of adopting the customer experience into every operational function and decision.
This story on CRM.com discusses the subtle, but very important differences achieved in giving the customer experience a high profile in your day-to-day operations. Here are a few of the major points:
It is true that the customer experience has a lot to do with sales and marketing, but to limit it to these silos is to miss the larger point. Everyone in your organization is a touch point to the consumer.
It’s also true that the customer experience reflects the emotions or feelings of your consumers. However, there are also tangible elements like contract clarity, financial options, web support, or even something as simple as the ease of transporting your product.
There are those who believe customer experience is a “tradeoff to profitability.” This “necessary evil” attitude is misleading. A healthier viewpoint is to see your operations as a means to solving your customers’ problems. The better you can do this, the more profitable you will be.
The truth is that there is a grain of truth in every attitude toward the customer experience. The only trouble is that many of these approaches are incomplete. Try thinking of the customers’ need in all phases of your operation.
Mystery Solved…If mystery shopping is so useful, why do retailers dislike it so much?
Mystery shopping is the best─no, make that the only-way retailers can get a truly objective view of the daily workings of their stores. When it’s done right, mystery shopping provides invaluable quantitative information about the customer experience that helps retailers optimize resources, motivate employees, and generally improve operations all around. Yet despite its potential value, mystery shopping is one of the most maligned metrics in the retail industry. How can this be?
The answer is simple. Mystery shopping is not a bad tool─it’s a tool that’s (all too often) used badly. There’s so much frustration out there resulting from poorly designed, badly maintained mystery shopping programs that the lousy reputation is no mystery at all. But to abandon mystery shopping because of a bad experience makes about as much sense as doing without a car because your last one happened to be a lemon.
How to make sure mystery shopping works for you
You spend a great deal of time and money designing customer service and product display protocols─elements that define your customer experience and provide crucial differentiation from your competition. A good mystery shopping program is the only way to get objective information about how well those carefully crafted strategies for service, display, and loss prevention are actually being implemented…and yet a bad mystery shopping program is almost sure to be a waste of time and money. How can you be sure you get a good one?
There’s no one answer to that question─just as there’s no one-size-fits-all mystery shopping program that can meet every company’s needs. However, the good news is that when mystery shopping programs are intelligently designed to meet a company’s specific needs, they are almost guaranteed to function beautifully. Working with an expert provider who can act as a true partner (not just a generic data-generating service) is the best way to ensure that you’ll get a customized program that’s right for you.
Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help determine whether your mystery shopping program─and your provider─are working for you:
Do you know exactly what data you need? Your provider should be able to help you pinpoint precisely what you want to learn from your program, and then help you define those goals in measurable terms. In addition, they should be able to suggest ways to integrate the needs of your different departments into an overall plan that minimizes redundancy and creates a true company-wide perspective.
Is your mystery shopping audit routinely refreshed to reflect new concerns and new processes? A mystery shopping audit form shouldn’t be “frozen in time”. What needs to be monitored today will probably be substantially different from what needed to be observed yesterday. And, if a mystery shopping program is correctly indexed with other information tools (like a customer satisfaction program), insights from these tools ought to be suggesting new issues for your mystery shoppers to observe and objectively audit.
Are you correlating your data with other metrics? Mystery shopping programs provide an objective view on how your stores are working, while customer feedback provides a subjective view. Taken together, these metrics create a complete picture of the customer experience in your stores, and allow you to make concrete changes to meet or exceed your customers’ expectations. As a simple example, let’s say a customer survey indicates dissatisfaction with your stores’ restrooms. If your mystery shopping data indicates that the restrooms were clean and stocked with toilet paper at 100% of visits but that no paper towels were available at 50%, you can conclude that paper towel availability is an important part of your customers’ expectations. You can also give specific direction to your employees to fix the problem (i.e., “keep the restrooms well stocked with paper towels”) rather than providing more general direction (i.e., “maintain the restrooms better”) that might not get to the real problem.
Because correlating mystery shopping data with other metrics is so important, using a provider that can analyze and help implement a wide range of customer service evaluation metrics can provide a great advantage. When the same provider is designing and administrating, for example, your mystery shopping program and your customer exit interviews, both programs can be designed to mesh well and to be optimally useful in tandem.
Are you properly “mining” your shopping results for greatest insight? Getting good data is important, but even the best mystery shopping data is useless unless it’s put to practical use. A good mystery shopping provider should be able to show you ways to translate your findings into measurable improvements in your bottom line. After all, pinpointing problem areas is only helpful to the degree that it allows you instigate positive change. Remember that your standards for performance improvement can─and should─be high: if your front-line employees are following procedures correctly 90% of the time, that’s not good enough. Interactions with employees are a critical part of your brand, and hitting brand standards only 90% of the time isn’t acceptable. (Just to put things into perspective: imagine if your company logo were printed in the right colors only 90% of the time!)
The bottom line has to be your bottom line
Simply put, a mystery shopping program is only as good as the data it produces─and the data is only good to the degree that it helps you make improvements to your business that impact your bottom line. Unfortunately, too many mystery shopping programs fail to produce good, usable data, and frustration is the inevitable result. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Good mystery shopping programs do exist, and choosing an expert mystery shopping provider─one who can truly be your partner in planning and execution─is your best guarantee of getting one.
Right Here, Right Now
“The customer is always right.” Perhaps no category of phrase has produced more clichés over the years as those that pertain to customer satisfaction. Marketers have traditionally turned to Customer Satisfaction Surveys and Comment Cards to tap into the value of consumer feedback and problem solving. These continue to be good ideas, but today’s Social Media provides consumers an immediate and direct outlet to convey satisfaction or dissatisfaction to friends and like thinking individuals. Brands need to embrace the value of being engaged in the conversation on the unofficial grapevine.
A report filed by DEI Worldwide called, “The Impact of Social Media on Purchasing Behavior tells us that 70% of consumers consult Social Media Websites when searching for information on a product or service. That is the number one source ranking ahead of Company Websites (68%). The reason for this is obvious. Because of the endless supply of communication outlets available, it is no longer acceptable to take a number, be batch processed, or be put on hold. Customers want a place to rant and rave right here, right now.
That sounds like bad news if you’ve been off the planet for the last year and a half. But companies shouldn’t panic. All they have to do is join the conversation. According to DEI, “Companies not engaging in social media as part on their on-line marketing strategy are missing an opportunity to reach consumers.” The report says that talking to a brand representative online sends a powerful and positive message. Sixty-seven percent said they are likely to pass information from brand representatives on to others.
Maybe it’s the tail wagging the dog, but Social Media outlets enable both the customer service challenge and the solution. It’s this simple: customers require direct, individual one-on-one attention or they are going somewhere else and will bring their friends with them. Being comfortable enough in your own skin to engage these consumers online, immediately closes the loop on an individual basis and provides invaluable word of mouth that your newfound friend will text, tweet or telephone with others.
Creating and Sustaining Interest in Mystery Shopping
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 Market Size
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
IVR Versus Mystery Shopping
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.
Competitive Audits
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.
Combining Mystery Shopping with Customer Opinions for the Best Data
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.
What’s Really Bugging Your Customers
Once upon a time, you could enter a store and expect to be met by a friendly, helpful sales associate. Today, in many cases, you’re lucky if you can even find a sales associate to ask a simple question.
In a study conducted by STORES/BIGResearch, 19% of shoppers believe rude employees are at the core of poor customer service. With the next overly-indulged generation of sales associates about to come of age, today’s customer service is not likely to improve.
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