In an increasingly competitive market more organisations are choosing to deliver service excellence as a strategic differential. A survey done by American Express revealed that customers are willing to pay up to 13% more with companies they believed provided excellent customer service.

For many brands the challenge lies in gaining unbiased, consistent knowledge and insight into how customers perceive your brand. Mystery Shopping is powerful research tool that provides just such a service.

Mystery shoppers are independent contractors who are pre-recruited to evaluate your brand on every level – their job is to measure the extent to which a customer’s interactions with a business mirror the experience that the brand intends. It allows brands to measure the extent to which they are delivering on their brand promise through the customer experience and to identify and correct deficiencies.

The benefits of a Mystery Shopping programme for any given brand are numerous, they include:

1. Monitoring and measuring performance.
   This is an effective means of giving you first hand, honest feedback on gauging how customers perceive and experience your brand.
2. Competitive analysis between locations.
   The consistent and methodical approach to mystery shopping allows brands to equally compare the level of performance across a variety of stores and locations.
3. Identifying small problems before they escalate.
   Having a mystery shopper identify small problems allows you to gain insider knowledge of how things can be improved, before it escalates to such a point where customers complain. This proactive response mechanism ensures that your brand is a step ahead in potentially resolving small problems before they become significant issues.
4. Identifying training needs and sales opportunities.
   The detailed reporting provided during a mystery shopping programme identifies key areas for improving the customer experience. This could be additional training of staff and highlighting potential opportunities to up- sell and cross- sell.
5. Improving customer retentions.
   The focus is to ensure that the level of service is of a high enough quality to make it appealing for existing customers to return, and not only on attracting new customers.
6. Improving customer service.
   This can have a positive impact on your bottom line.
   With service as a differentiator, word of mouth plays a crucial role in conveying this message, whether it is good or bad. Unfortunately, people will tell twice as many people about bad service than they do about good service, which can impact your bottom line.
7. Creating employee awareness of what’s important when serving customers.
   The feedback gained creates an opportunity to formally reiterate what the brand expects from all of its employees in terms of customer service, keeping it top of mind.
8. Ensuring positive customer relationships on the front line.
   Having well trained staff is essential to building customer trust. Consumers are more likely to purchase from a knowledgeable and helpful sales assistant.
9. Monitoring consistent delivery of product service quality.
   Once a reputation for service is established this needs to be maintained and delivered across all stores regardless of location. A Mystery Shopping programme is an effective means to ensure this objective is being achieved.
10. Engaging and motivating employees.
    An incentive initiative can be implemented to encourage employees to deliver the level of customer service required. These initiatives can be tremendously motivating for staff to improve, or to continue to deliver an excellent level of customer service.

The detail of information reported from a Mystery Shopping programme is invaluable, regardless of whether your product is sold online, via the phone or instore. The reports give brands an opportunity to pivot their delivery to more effectively align visions with customer expectations.

They say that happiness is when experience exceeds expectations. Through thorough measuring, managing and improving your customer experience we aim to ensure that all our clients have an opportunity to deliver service as the strategic deferential and exceed their customers’ expectations.

Get in touch today to discuss a Mystery Shopping programme that can be tailored to facilitate your business growth.