Mystery shopping and its importance for stores

Mystery shopping, also known as secret shopping, is the method by which a store or a company evaluates its employees’ performance. In this a person in disguise pretends to be a shopper, visits the store, interacts with the employees and assesses their ability to build a rapport with the customer in order to sell their products. That person is actually hired by the store owner or the company proprietor to, assess the performance of employees and in the end submit the report to the proprietor. The person hired is called mystery shopper.

Apart from evaluation of performances, mystery shoppers analyze other commercial aspects of retail stores. These aspects could be price, availability, and quality of the product; customer service via websites, telephones and in person; and house keeping. The freelance professionals called secret shoppers then hand over their assessment to the company head who actually hired them.

There are no essential requirements to be a secret shopper, as shoppers don’t have specific appearance or qualification. Those who have a flair and passion to enhance the customer service and the quality of the product can plunge into secret shopping. It would be interesting to learn that the secret shoppers are paid for their job. It is a profession just like any other profession.

Although the job entails shopping which is fun, mystery shopping is a serious business and should be carefully dealt with. There must be certain innate traits within a person that would be helpful in being a secret shopper. These traits are the ability to act or pretend, being trustworthy, reliable and professional. Apart from all these, secret shoppers should have a better mode of transportation, good writing skills and a clear perspective of actual reporting and their personal opinion so that the truth is not tampered.

The stores make use of mystery shopping to uplift their sales by improving customer satisfaction. Secret shoppers are hired wholely and solely to increase sales by improving the performance of the employees. Mystery shopping is useful not just for evaluating the staff’s performance but also for checking the customer service offered by the rival business. It can be compared with one’s own customer service to find the problem areas. The problems can then be rectified to increase the number of customers and hence the sales.

Before hiring a mystery shopper make sure to inquire about the services that the shopper has in hand, do the research well before hiring. Conducting an audit of the employees is a tough job as it is mandatory that they do not get prior information regarding this exercise otherwise they will not present their true picture at the time of scrutiny.

A store manager keeps a vigil on his employees while they deal with the customers in person and over the phone. This often makes the employees nervous and they become inadvertent under pressure. Instead a mystery shopper brings out the true picture of the employees as they perform naturally. This helps to locate the fault and the drawbacks of each and every employee perfectly which subsequently helps in improving customer satisfaction. Sometimes the customers inquire about the products over the phone before coming to the store. In this situation, the employee’s ability to converse with them over the phone, in order to convert the caller into a potential customer, matters the most. To locate the faults of the employee, some fake calls are required, and only a professional mystery shopper can do it. A store can avail the same kind of services provided by the companies for the product distribution and marketing. Mystery shoppers are hired by the companies to find out what the customers think about the new product that hits the market.

Mystery shoppers are known by many names like virtual customers, evaluators in disguise and spotters but they solve only one purpose of enhancing the customer service of a store and increasing its sales.

article courtesy of AssessmentCompetency.com
author: Joseph Then

Why Invest in Customer Satisfaction Research?

Keeping customers satisfied is essential to building a successful, growing business. While many companies work hard to increase sales, they may overlook the little things that keep customers happy and buying more. It is easier to accelerate your business by cultivating the customers you already have rather than constantly working to attract new customers.

Customer satisfaction research is not an end unto itself. The purpose, of course, in measuring customer satisfaction is to see where a company stands in this regard in the eyes of its customers, thereby enabling service and product improvements which will lead to higher satisfaction levels. The research is just one component in the quest to improve customer satisfaction. Improving customers’ satisfaction with your business translates directly to your bottom line.

Still not sure you’re ready to invest in improving service?

Check out these amazing statistics:

• It costs between five and six times more to attract a new customer than to keep an existing customer.

• Companies can boost profits from 25 percent to 125 percent by retaining 5 percent more existing customers.

• Only one out of 25 dissatisfied customers will express dissatisfaction to you.

• Happy customers tell at least four others of a positive experience. Dissatisfied customers tell as many as 12 about a negative experience.

• Two-thirds of customers do not feel valued by those serving them.

• Acquiring new customers can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining current customers.

• A 2 percent increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10 percent.

• The average company loses 10 percent of its customers each year. * The customer profitability rate tends to increase over the life of a retained customer.

article courtesy of MysteryShoppingLive.com
Sources: Extreme Management, Mark Stevens, 2001; Leading on the Edge of Chaos, Emmett C. Murphy and Mark A. Murphy, 2003

8 Tips for Providing a Superior Customer Experience

Last week, we walked over the idea of giving good customer service even during a bad economy as it makes good business sense. But as a business how do you actually achieve it? How do you give your customer a superior customer experience?

Here are eight simple tips that you can follow that are based on the best known principles:

1. Try to put yourself in your customer’s shoe.

Understand how your customers’ expectations are rising over time. Accept the fact that, what was probably ‘good enough’ last year may not be any good now. Use different form of customer surveys, interviews and focus groups to understand what your customers really want from you, what they value and what they believe they are getting (or not getting) from your business.

2. Always use your strengths to differentiate your business from your competition.

Usually your quality of service is an area whether you can really strengthen your business over time. Your price and products may be reasonable and up-to-date – but don’t forget that your competitors’ are pretty darn good too. So in order to differentiate your business from your competitors, you will need to provide your customers an exceptional service that makes your customer loyal to your brand and not others. So even when your competitor offers some seasonal discounts or price cuts, your customers are likely to stick with you as they value the ‘exceptional service’ that you provide. You can also make a more lasting difference by providing personalized, responsive and extra-mile service that stands out in a unique way your customers will appreciate – and remember.

3. Learn to manage your customers’ expectations.

It is impossible to make every customer happy as you can’t always give them everything their hearts desire. However you can always help them by bringing their expectations into line with what you know you can deliver. The best way to do this is by first building a reputation for making and keeping clear promises. Once you have established a solid base of trust and good reputation within the community and among your customers, you only need to ask your customers for their patience in your difficult times when you cannot meet their first requests. Nine out of ten times they will extend the understanding and cut you some slack.

Another tricky way to manage customers’ expectations is to ‘under promise, then over deliver’. Here’s an example: you know your customer wants something done really fast. You know it will take an hour to complete. Don’t tell your customer that it will take an hour. Instead, let them know you will try to do it as fast as you can, but promise a 90-minute timeframe. Then, when you actually finish in just one hour (as you knew you would all along), your customer will be delighted to find that you finished the job ‘so quickly’. That’s ‘under promise, then over deliver’.

4. Try to bounce back with effective service recovery during the time of a media/public disaster.

Sometimes things can go wrong. It’s very natural especially in a retail industry where your staffs interact with the masses. When your customer is unhappy for whatever reasons, try to do everything in your power to make things right again. Fix the problem and always show sincere concern for any discomfort, frustration or inconvenience that your business may have caused. Then do a little bit more by giving your customer something positive to remember – a token of goodwill, a gift of appreciation, a discount on future orders, an upgrade to a higher class of product and so on. Certainly this is not the time to play the ‘blame game’ to find the actual faulty person or to calculate the costs of repair. Your business goodwill and positive word-of-mouth is worth lot more than that.

5. Always try to set and achieve high service standards.

You can go beyond basic and expected levels of service to provide your customers with desired and even surprising service interactions. Try to make your business the determinant of the standard for service in your industry, and then make a way to always go beyond it. Give more choice than ‘the usual’ that your competitors, be more flexible than ‘normal’, be faster than ‘the average’, and extend a better warranty than all the others. Your customers will notice your higher standards. But eventually those standards will be copied by your competitors, too. So don’t slow down. Keep stepping up!

6. Sometimes you need to appreciate the negative comments that you receive from your customers.

Customers with complaints can be your best allies in building and improving your business. Constrictive comments are the key to improve your service, thus your business will get the best feedback If you work with a experienced Mystery Shopping provider that understands your requirements and trains their shoppers to mystery shop your business to point out what problems they are facing and what and where you are doing thing wrong. Mystery Shoppers can show where your products or services are below expectations and point out areas where your competitors are getting ahead or where your staff is falling behind.

7. Take personal responsibility for everything that happens in your business.

In many organizations, people are quick to blame others for problems or difficulties at work: managers blame staff, staff blame managers, Engineering blames Sales, Sales blames marketing and everyone blames Finance. This does not really help anybody and certainly not your business! Blaming yourself doesn’t work, either. No matter how many mistakes you may have made, tomorrow is another chance to do better. You need high self-esteem to give good service. Feeling ashamed doesn’t help. It doesn’t make sense to make excuses and blame the computers, the system or the budget, either. This kind of justification only prolongs the pain before the necessary changes can take place.

The most reliable way to bring about constructive change in your organization is to take personal responsibility and help make good things happen. When you see something that needs to be done, do it. If you see something that needs to be done in another department, recommend it. Be the person who makes suggestions, proposes new ideas and volunteers to help on problem solving teams, projects and solutions.

8. Try to see the world from each customer’s point of view.

We often get so caught up in our own world that we lose sight of what our customers actually experience. Make time to stand on the other side of the counter or listen on the other end of the phone. You can even trying becoming a ‘mystery shopper’ at your own place of business. Or become a customer of your best competition. What you notice when you look from the ‘other side’ is what your customers experience every day. Finally, always remember that service is the currency that keeps our economy moving. I serve you in one business, you serve me in another and the cycle goes on. When either of us improves, the economy gets a little better. When both of us improve, people are sure to take notice. When everyone improves, the whole world grows stronger and closer together. So now is the time to make it happen! We live by that motto, do you?

article courtesy of MysteryShoppingLive.com