A successful business, invariably, is one which aspires to become more successful. Even in the most ideally-run organisation, there will be problem areas and weaknesses which can be addressed. Improvements of this sort require self-examination. After all, a problem cannot well be addressed without first understanding what it is.
Moreover, this examination must be constant – since new failings are always developing and a business faces a constant battle to identify and combat these failings. In this battle, businesses have a variety of weapons at their disposal. But – at the risk of laboring a metaphor – there are few keener than mystery shopping.
Mystery shopping allows a company to test whether it is providing a quality experience for the customer. While this may seem fundamental, it is a remarkably difficult thing to gauge from the inside. If you are a retailer and you walk into one of your own shops, then your experience will be markedly different from that of ordinary customers. After all, your employees are likely to make an extra effort to impress you – especially if you pay their wages.
It is not always clear what a mystery shopper does, exactly. Well, to put it simply, a mystery shopper is a person who comes to your business like any other customer – the only difference being that after they have left, they will file a report whose findings can then be used to identify areas of weakness.
But why, exactly, is a mystery shopper so worthwhile? Let’s take a look at some of the reasons.
Impartiality
A mystery shopper is invariably someone who has no prior knowledge of your store or of your staff. They can therefore be relied upon to be utterly unbiased and impartial. Moreover, they may be able to spot things which others simply cannot. Good mystery shopping agencies will provide their shoppers with a checklist of things to look out for. Items on this list might include the length of the wait, and whether the serving staff member was wearing a name badge. This list can be added to or otherwise modified where you deem it appropriate to do so.
Inexpensiveness
Mystery shopping is not an expensive way to solicit feedback. You only need to pay a single person for a few hours of their time and the information provided will likely provide a significant return on this investment. That said, it is certainly worth paying a little extra to secure the services of a reputable mystery shopping agency like Tactical Solutions, so that the information is as useful as possible.
Motivator
The thought that a mystery shopper might wander through the door at any moment is one which will change your employee’s attitude toward customer service. Knowing that any customer may well be a mystery shopper, they will treat every customer better – or, so goes the theory. In practice, it is probably better to provide staff with better incentives. If staff are only performing well because they know that they might be judged, then the employees who pay their wages will face a constant battle to find ways to motivate them. It is far better to find more positive ways to instill staff with greater self-motivation and professional pride than it is to hang a looming threat over their head.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is something of a holy grail in the world of retail. It is a commodity which is difficult to measure and yet one whose importance is almost unparalleled. While customers may be fickle when it comes to price, they can be loyal based upon their shopping experience. A good shopping experience can help to keep a customer for life, a bad one can mar a company’s name irrevocably.
Studies into customer satisfaction should be taken with a grain of salt – since there is no hard-and-fast way of measuring it, we are left simply with an individual’s opinion – which can be misleading. There is a growing body of evidence, however, which suggests that customer’s satisfaction is likely to influence their propensity to spend exponentially. On the other hand, customers who have an excellent shopping experience are more likely to become evangelists for your cause and tell their friends about their good experience thereby attracting more footfall to your shop.
A study by infoquest, which encompassed the findings of twenty-thousand different customer surveys in forty different countries, found that a customer who is ‘totally satisfied’ contributes 2.6 times as much to a company over their lifetime than a customer who is ‘somewhat satisfied’ and 14 times as much as one who is ‘somewhat dissatisfied’. Proof, surely, of the importance of ensuring that every customer leaves your premises wholly satisfied.
