Mystery Shopping
70% of customers are dissatisfied because of bad customer service.
Mystery shops are like theatre. If an actor falls out of character on the stage, or just doesn't seem to fit the role, it's disappointing, a waste of time. Unfortunately, all too often, conventional mystery shopping is just this, bad theatre. It comes across as contrived and therefore fails to elicit normal employee responses.
On the other hand, mystery shopping can help combat the biases that managers and supervisors have about their teams. And, since employees typically do not show their true colors in front of their superiors, it can be a great way to get the inside scoop on what goes on when associates interact with customers and an efficient way to reveal the quality of customer interactions.
Debunking the MythConsider 3 of the most common pitfalls with conventional mystery shop programs: |
Our Better WayWith personas and QCI™ analytics, we've improved mystery shop in 2 key ways: |
- Often times, shoppers simply don't fit the customer profile. They are too old, too young, too sloppy, too well dressed or simply fail to ask the right questions. Shoppers who stand out make employees suspicious and taint the data.
- Mystery shop reports can be inconclusive. For example, reports that are largely narrative make trend spotting difficult; on the other hand, largely number based reports obscure key observations. A potentially much deeper reporting failure speaks to a methodological failure: if the wrong testing assumptions are in place then the information yielded will be irrelevant.
- Mystery shops rarely put performance in context. Consider this: Today's consumer experience is defined by a multitude of options. Even when buying something as minor as a coffee pot, customers are likely to do a quick web search and pull up a review or two. For purchases perceived as consequential, customers typically call around, shop multiple locations and do fact-finding all in an attempt to get the best value, solid information, the right 'extras', etc. Given this customer reality, mystery shopping that lacks context, i.e. fails to acknowledge the larger thought web, is in a sense fundamentally inaccurate.
We keep it real: We work from customer research (either provided by you or conducted by us) to compose a variety of true-to-life 'personas'. Then, our shoppers are trained to ask the truly pertinent questions and work from core customer objectives--not scripts.
By having our shoppers work from specific customer profiles, documented and built into the testing, we not only keep the mystery in mystery shopping, but expand the scope of testing, so you can see exactly how your associates respond to particular types of customers.
We deliver thorough reports filled with useful, actionable, next step recommendations: Unique to our reporting is the QCI™ model which analyzes all four dimensions of customer interactions. Our reports lay out both quantitative and qualitative facts and can be setup to explore as much context as will suit the needs of your customer experience testing.
To find out how our method for persona driven mystery shopping works, let's talk.
