How to design an effective Mystery Shopping Program

While an organization is about to establish a new mystery shopping program to be incorporated within its system to evaluate performance efficiency- most of the times, serious confusions arise. This is due to the fact that, a good number of the people working in organizations are not clearly aware of the mystery shopping process. Being a new idea in the industry- there hasn’t been much scope for the establishment and practice of rigid rules regarding mystery shopping.

Now what would you do if you are a manager and want to integrate a mystery shopping program in your organization’s system? Surely, the feedbacks or references from the different departments aren’t going to be much helpful. They will focus on their individual needs and their agenda will be myopic to their scope only. As a result, you- the manager will always be in a to and fro run between the causes and the effects. However, the good news is managing a mystery shopping program need not to be that a hassle if you just can clarify some basic questions and can follow some necessary steps.

The burning questions!

To start with you need to be clear of your objectives and the best way to do this is answer the following simple questions:

• What result is to be gained from the program?
• What information is to be gained from this program in terms of operations?
• How will the top management accept it?
• What expectations does the top management have?
• How will the other functional departments of the organization be affected from the program?
• How the other departments need to be integrated in the system?

The Blueprint:

• The first thing to determine is the standards and factors- upon which the performances will be evaluated. If there is any operations manual or any other form of formal guideline within the organization that can direct the activities it is prescribed to follow.
• Most of the mystery shopper agencies have a generic format designed by them. However, many companies come up with their versions of compatible formats. The organization/manager should decide on which format to follow * While planning on the evaluation format- not all the factors should be given equal weight- therefore the factors should be assigned appropriate weights as per their importance.
• The next thing to consider is the key areas where the customers have repetitively complained, and also what complains has been given most. These issues need to be reflected in the evaluation.
• Now, the focus should be turned towards the format of the evaluation paper. The ranking, scoring methods, the length etc have to be decided.
• For evaluating more than one location- the frequency need to be calculated- i.e. how many times will each location be evaluated? Hence also this need to be clarified that, whether the evaluation will be done for a specific sample or for the whole population?
• If the evaluation process requires shopping/ expenditure of money- then the organization needs to decide on the mode of payment.
• What will be the duration of each shopping sessions?
• Will the shopper have to return the products/service that has been purchased?
• Will the same shopper be allowed in a location more than once?
• What other tools should be incorporated so that the subjectivity of the survey can be lessened?

The decision of the Administration of the system:

• Which functional department will be delegated the authority to manage the internal affairs with the mystery shopping? Is it marketing? Quality Assurance? Or Operations?
• Can a single employee be delegated the authority instead of a whole department? If yes, then what criteria should the person have to provide liaison between the internal affairs and the evaluation?
• Hence an opportunity can be assessed- in some agencies they provide personnel to administer the process- any organization finding it worthy can outsource the process.
• How the program can be linked to several HR issues- such as, compensations, bonuses, performance appraisals, motivational programs etc. It also needs to be decided whether the employees should be given monetary/non monetary bonuses.
• The format of the presentation of the evaluation is important as well. The manager/organization needs to decide before hand of the format of the report- it can be a summary, an analysis, numbers- according to the requirement.
• What profile of the shoppers is required to carry out the evaluation and that will compliment the profiles of the target customers
• Will the shopper be allowed to get recognized by the operations? What back up strategy should the organization have if the shopper gets exposed anyhow?
• What limiting factors does the organization have which might inhibit a shopper’s visit, e.g. business hours.

The Usage of the System:

• How will the information retrieved be analyzed and put into action?
• How can the program be included in the marketing tools?
• Several other organizational tools like motivational training, corrective process, incentive etc might be needed for the program to yield the best effect
• How will the problems identified be handled?

It’s true, designing a mystery shopping program requires much extensive research of the organizational needs. As a manager, you might find the numbers of questions to be answered pretty scary. But the fact is, as influential an effective campaign can be- a faulty one can be equally devastating. So do ponder and plan nicely!

Article courtesy of MysteryShoppingLive.com

How to Get Better Results from Mystery Shopping

In this era of communication, where a million ways exist to transfer vast amounts of information in the blink of an eye, clients always demand results as quickly as possible from their service providers. The field of mystery shopping is no exception to this, and it is very true that the internet and its various facets have changed the act of presenting reports on mystery shopping into a staggeringly fast one. But here we must stop to think: is speed more important than quality? Is the quality of the reports being sacrificed for greater speed?

In order for a mystery shopping system to be perfect, it must be designed suitably, and each module of the program must be properly implemented. It should incorporate a range of specific objectives, a form for the evaluation of the mystery shoppers (with appropriate fields), suitable shopping personnel, clear instructions, a well-planned schedule and timely presentation of reports. Presenting the report is what we are focusing on here. It incorporates everything from communication between the client company, the mystery shoppers and the mystery shopping service.

If the objectives of your mystery shopping program are to obtain a benchmark of employee performance and instigate motivation among your front-line employees, you must make sure that the employees are ready to accept the reports as facts. The client companies are very serious about having high-quality reports delivered on time. However, at times, quality and speed seem to become conflicting priorities, and in order to get the best possible report in the shortest amount of time, you need to iron out certain issues.

Validation of reports: Proper validation must be carried out for the post-visit reports of each mystery shopper. It can be done simply using a receipt from a cash register, which usually contains all relevant information, such as date and time or purchase, as well as the list of items purchased. Unless a report is validated, it will not be taken into account by any major shopping company. It is completely worth waiting for a copy of the receipt, as it can clear a lot of confusion both in the short run and the long run.

The value of the program: If your company aims to motivate the employees to provide good customer service to your patrons all the time, you must keep them on their toes so that they never ‘let their guard down’. Otherwise, their alertness may decrease over time. You can let them know about the shopping program, but never let them get any wind about when it is actually going to take place. If they get to learn its scheduled time, there is a good chance that they will remain alert only until that date, and begin to slack off after that. Many employees choose to take advantage of their employer in this way, and sometimes they do not even bother to hide it from customers. In order to keep your customers satisfied at any given time, you must keep your employees acting their best whenever they are working. On the other hand, if you do not tell them at all when they are going to be tested, they may start slacking off anyway, so it is best to subject them to ’surprise testing’.

The quality of the program: Validating the program for factual accuracy is just one step of the quality control of the whole mystery shopping system. If you want a well-done report, you need to be ready to spend. The lower-end companies only provide basic services such as checking whether all the necessary fields on the forms have been filled up. On the other hand, the higher-end companies provide you with complete reports of high quality by manually reviewing and checking all the individual reports for errors and consistent scoring patterns before compiling the final report. In such cases, reports which do not comply with the required criteria are rejected by default and replacements are ordered for them by sending in more mystery shoppers. While this obviously takes a bit more time than it takes to prepare a report that undergoes only the most rudimentary of screenings, the extra time is well worth it because of the substantially higher quality, since it will help you to structure your future decisions better, in particular the ones which you are making based on the contents of the report.

Field-level reporting: The importance of this particular factor cannot be overstressed. Quickly bringing about change to your front-line employees’ performance requires that the client company allows reports to be delivered directly to the field level rather than to corporate offices. While this requires proper validation and screening, they nonetheless make the whole process a lot less efficient by freeing the core management team from the hassle of having to deal with reports on the individual selling crew, leaving it to the local management instead. Not only does the local management know their employees better in personal terms, but they can also make sure of the validity of the reports far more easily than the core management can. It causes fewer questions to be raised about the repots, and allows the management to always keep the employees on their toes, since they would never be sure about when the next mystery shopper will pay a visit.

The cost does matter. In certain cases, you may find that it is more expensive to go for speedily done reports, since places which do not rely on quick-service systems (e.g. furniture dealers) and encounter fewer customers per day require a new shopper to be sent for every ‘mission’ in order to avoid recognition by the employees – a noticeably more expensive procedure. However, the internet certainly has made things easier by speeding up the data collection and validation process greatly, and it saves the most time when delivering the report, since the communication is more or less instantaneous compared to postal deliveries. Even after making allowances for receipt-based validations, a vast majority of reports can be dispatched to the clients within two days of the date of shopping.

Article courtesy of MysteryShoppingLive.com

Inside Marketing: Can You Really Measure Customer Experience?

Mystery shopping programs help direct staff training and measure how CUs stack up against competitors

By John Swinburn
Executive Director of MSPA

A senior citizen walked into his Dallas credit union to discuss his soon-to-mature share certificate. Interest rates had dropped, and he was looking for a better way to invest his money.

The teller directed him to a CU member service rep to learn more about his options, noting that possibly an annuity or a conservative mutual fund would better suit his needs.

Unbeknownst to the teller, this senior citizen was more than what met the eye. He was a mystery shopper, evaluating the customer experience. He was taking note of such things as whether the teller introduced him to the MSR, or just pointed and sent him away, and whether the teller restated his inquiry to the consultant, or left him, the valued member, to re-tell his story.

Credit unions are using mystery shoppers right now to monitor and improve everything from customer service and cross-selling techniques to compliance and fair lending practices and how well they measure up to the competition.

Often used as a tool to identify and continually improve customer service, mystery shopping can have a significant impact on every aspect of the customer experience, which ultimately drives the bottom line.

The impact of mystery shopping on credit unions has changed significantly over the years.

“Before, we had to explain mystery shopping,” says Judi Hess, owner of Customer Perspectives(TM) in Hooksett, NH. “Now that the discipline has proven its value to the industry, we need to explain new ideas for maximizing your program.”

Hess explains that an effective mystery shopping program approaches customer service improvement from several angles. The same shopping program can be used to measure and fine-tune training initiatives and highlight specific results with individual employees. Results could also be part of an incentive program on the individual or branch level.

Training and Measurement

$1.6 billion Travis Credit Union in Vacaville, Calif., uses mystery shopping on regularly to monitor all member touch points; including teller shops, loan shops, phone shops and new account shops. Management uses the data to pinpoint specific areas that may need improvement.

Travis CU’s January 2007 mystery shop reports were showing a score of just 62 percent for employees asking questions and listening for cues of how the credit union could better serve members. The CU implemented a training program that taught employees what types of phrases to listen for and what kinds of questions to ask. In a year’s time, the same question received an 82 percent score. During the same time frame, Travis CU had 8,014 direct new members compared to 7,842 in 2006.

“If employees aren’t listening and asking questions, they’re missing opportunities,” said Renee DeSantis, president, Game Film Consultants, a mystery shopping firm in Austin, Texas. “That’s where the value of mystery shopping is very evident. It clearly shows where to focus your training efforts.”

In its shop, $98 million Premier Federal Credit Union in Greensboro, N.C., was looking to improve its cross-selling. It leveraged mystery shopping results to pinpoint specific areas where employees could use additional training.

“Realizing that providing top-level service to members includes offering a variety of products to meet their needs, we began to focus on a ‘needs-based’ selling culture,” says CUES member Lori Thompson, executive vice president of Premier FCU. “Our mystery shopping program was a key factor in being sure employees were on the right track.”

When the mystery shopping program began, Premier FCU employees achieved a 52.8 percent score on closing skills, or asking questions to see where additional products may benefit members. Relying heavily on mystery shopping scores and training provided by its mystery shopping provider (Customer 1st, Greensboro, N.C.), Premier FCU was able to increase its closing score to 95.6 percent in just two years.

Measurements and Morale

Premier FCU also implemented an incentive program for strong shop results by publicly recognizing associates for a job well done. Sometimes associates are rewarded with movie tickets or other small but meaningful giveaways to recognize exceptional evaluations. This step can boost the likelihood of positive results, says Carl Philips, director of Customer-1st.

“It’s about catching them doing it right,” says Phillips. “The old adage, ‘You can’t move what you don’t measure,’ applies here. If associates know a mystery shopping program is in place to measure closing standards, then they will be more likely to meet those standards.”

No matter the type of shop, program or initiative, mystery shopping is an excellent opportunity to boost employee morale.

As Phillips pointed out, the simple fact that employees know they’re being evaluated is often an incentive to do good work. Recognizing employees for a job well done or talking through things that didn’t go so well is a form of hands-on training that gets results.

According to Bob Maietta of Service Evaluation Concepts, a credit union in Massachusetts uses its mystery shopping reports at quarterly meetings with loan officers. Team leaders point out the areas of the mystery shopping program that show weakness, taking out the names of employees and discussing ways to fix the problem. More importantly, they also point out the areas where employees do exceptionally well. That simple task alone helped improve mystery shop scores to the level of the credit union’s service standards.

Frank Aloi of ath Power Consulting in Andover, Mass., says mystery shopping can focus a credit union back on the basics of the industry.

“Credit unions were created to deliver the type of member/customer-focused service that banks want to be known for,” Aloi said. “We’re seeing the trend in the industry that mystery shopping is being used as one of the primary mediums to gather customer experience data. Effective shop programs tell management what really is happening out on the front lines.”

In addition to revealing a credit union’s strengths and weaknesses, mystery shopping can also be used to see how well a credit union is measuring up to its competition. Evaluating the same customer touch points at competitive banks and other credit unions allows significant insight into opportunities to gain new members.

“Using the information for coaching and training truly will create change and improve customer service,” says Brian Caldwell, client services manager for IntelliShop in Perrysburg, Ohio. “It’s a simple equation. Better customer service leads to better member satisfaction which equals a better bottom line.”

Should the crisis bring you down, who will help you rise?

What is the use of Mystery Shopping and how to find a good service provider.

from MysteryShoppingLive.com

In the conditions of the recession many companies reduce budgets assigned for marketing programmes. And this is no wonder. Each business investment must be absolutely balanced, and just bound to hit the gold. In the present situation ordering a Mystery Shopping service can be a solution of this kind. I’ll try to explain why.

Right now, in this period so difficult for all businesses, you will get exact information about the state of affairs in your business from the viewpoint of your customers. What can be more important for you than to understand what you need to offer your potential clients to get them to leave their money at your shop!

The information you will get will not sound like verbose lectures of some guru telling you what should be the right things to do to survive. Neither will it come in the form of sophisticated computations financial analysts would make to show you the situation in other companies. It will be a collection of precise facts about the current state of service in your business (or in the businesses of your closest competitors).

The owners will get data presented in the right form to enable them to take well-balanced and timely decisions.
What can make you stand out now?
What should you focus on in your sales?
What will the clients buy now?
What will make good sales?
Why doesn’t this or that product sell?
And a lot of other information for further decision-making.
Managers in locations will get up-to-date information on how they can quickly and efficiently improve the situation in their shops. You will notice the effect tomorrow!

And the employees will have an additional incentive for proactive work. To put it in simple words, a healthy internal competition spirit will spring up, so your client service will become more concentrated and vivid.

As soon as you realized how useful Mystery Shopping can be in the current situation, the most important thing for you is not to make a mistake while choosing a provider, or, more precisely, the operator that will perform the service of Mystery Shopping for you so that it will be of great use for your future business activity.

It is a proven fact that if a first experience of cooperation with a provider of this service was negative or the result presented to the company’s top management did not match professional standards, the method itself will be deemed a deep disappointment, in spite of the fact that it is not the method but the agency that applied it is to blame. Reports submitted by such agencies will be put on a shelf and forgotten for good, and this will probably be the best thing that can be done about them. I don’t think you would ever like such a scenario at all.

Agencies that sacrifice the quality of their surveys to keep the prices low are not very rare.

As a result, clients get frustrated, as they get something different from what they have planned for or something completely unusable.

So our question is: how can one find a provider that is really professional? What should one necessarily pay attention to when choosing a Mystery Shopping service provider? Here is a list of what I deem to be the key characteristics of a good provider.

Experience in Mystery Shopping. Visit their official website, ask company representatives, and obtain recommendations from their former and actual clients to check this.

• Knowledge of the business area of the client, which is critical for the development of the program of the survey.
• Sufficient geographical coverage. If the scope of your project comprises different regions or countries, check how the coverage of these territories is organized and who the operators are.
• Availability of a sufficient number of mystery shoppers possessing the required specialization in the required regions.
• A specially designed on-line system for data collection and storage that will help you optimize your work and reduce the decision-making time.
• Availability of software and consulting products developed by the agency.
• Availability of experts in all business areas in the agency. The agency’s resources should be sufficient for your project.
• Ability to conduct multi-lingual projects (if your project is going to be international).
• MSPA membership (Mystery Shopping Providers Association).
• Compliance with the effective law, professional and ethical standards of the country.

Important: get acquainted with every member of the team that is presented to you for your project.

In addition to all the aforesaid, I strongly recommend you to check the feedback about the provider before signing a contract with it. Read clients references about provider, articles and other publications. Inspect comments posted on webboards. This will help you avoid the nonpros.

Deciding on the agency, pay attention to the corporate culture and climate in the provider company. Remember that you are looking for a partner with whom you should have good mutual understanding and comfortable long-term relationship.

In conclusion, I’d like to say that no matter what agency you choose for conducting a Mystery Shopping campaign in your company, you should be ready to engage in teamwork. The quality of the results you will get depends on the quality of your formulation of the assignments.

A Tale of 2 Burgers

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.

If your store’s brand doesn’t match your typical customer’s experience, get on the phone to HR right now. You may not have much time to undo the damage that’s been done. While many customers will put up with an occasional snafu in service or expectations, consistently disconnecting from your brand with bad customer service and substandard products will kill interest in your product. When this happens, your only hope is to prioritize the training and monitoring of your frontline staff to revive public interest and match your service and product with those pretty pictures in your advertisements.

True, customers are fickle. One day they want you to leave them alone to wander the store, and the next day they complain no one is helping them. But the bottom line is, customers who consistently have poor experiences will look for someplace else to shop. And they tell their friends. No retailer wants to suffer bad word-of-mouth. The Internet has made it all too easy to turn the tide of a brand’s popularity with a few truthful, albeit wicked, stories in a very short amount of time.

Retailers must be seriously supportive of ongoing training and coaching for sales associates based upon the principles of excellence in service. This is the only true competitive advantage in an industry where your brand may sink or swim based on public opinion. Companies who seek assistance in developing and maintaining strong training and coaching programs often need a comprehensive mystery shopping program to cultivate the strong frontline staff that drives sales, and provides managers and store owners with the ongoing, meaningful data necessary to maintain and continue to build on those increases in both sales and customer loyalty.

Source: http://www.iccds.com/a-tale-of-two-burgers.html