The benefits of using Mystery Shopping in your customer experience.
If you think your business needs more clients to generate high profits, you are wrong! You need clients to come back to you again and again. Statistics claim that the cost of retaining a customer is ten times lower than attracting a new one. This is why when we attract new clients, we have to stick to them. Mystery Shopper is a research tool that helps your retail brand test how the staff is interacting with customers. There are many advantages of the method, but today we will focus on 10 main ones. So, Mystery Shopping tips help:
Increase efficiency
How? Mystery shopping solutions can be used to monitor and measure the performance of a service and to verify that the service meets corporate standards. Of course, one of the store managers can also do this, but over time he usually stops noticing important things and objectively assessing the quality of service. Mystery Shopping, on the other hand, will allow you to get independent assessments, as well as the individual characteristics of each region, store, or even an individual employee. Once you have this data, you can use it to improve efficiency.
Get customer feedback
Use mystery shoppers to get reliable, specific, and quality feedback from a customer’s perspective. This can help highlight specific areas that you might want to improve.
Evaluate the performance of staff
What sales methods are used by the staff? Are employees active or prefer to ignore customers? How do staff handle customer objections or complaints? Are the consultants professional in their field with enough product knowledge? Do they smile at the client, do they greet him? Answers to these, as well as many other questions about the work of the staff, can be given by mystery shoppers.
Analyze the organization of the retail space
Is the store neat? Does the design of the outlet comply with the corporate style approved by the company? Are the rooms and windows kept clean throughout the working day? Is there up-to-date information about current discounts and promotions? Mystery shopping programs address these questions, in particular the needs and challenges facing the retail industry.
Verify the functionality of the standard operating procedures (SOP)
Most often, the management of the company independently sets goals and develops plans for the structural divisions of the company. As a rule, those to whom these plans are “lowered” may not always comply with them. One of the benefits of mystery shopper research is that companies can, at the store level, test how new operating procedures work, and if they work at all.
Create a motivational tool for your employees
Checks will show exactly which of the sellers is worthy of the premium, and who, on the contrary, should improve their communication skills with buyers. Moreover, employees usually will not have a misunderstanding why some were awarded, others were not. Also, the results of inspections are communicated to the personnel, which provides additional benefits for the management of the trade enterprise.
Save clients
Every mystery shopping improvement you make in your business leads to better customer service, which in turn leads to your customers coming back to you again and again.
It is a form of primary market research that uses quantitative techniques as the mystery shopper usually has to fill out a form rating his experience. Also, this method is used for accessing services only and is not applicable to products.
A step further in this evolution was the emergence of the middlemen, mystery shopping companies. Earlier organizations would hire their own mystery shoppers. However, after some time the management and staff got familiar with the mystery shopper hired for a particular outlet since he or she would visit it frequently so the evaluation was not exactly unbiased. Hence mystery shopping companies came into being that hires several shoppers who are randomly given assignments with different clients.
