Which of the following is a major advantage of mystery shoppers?
We’ve heard of them before, but what does a mystery shopper do and how can they drive customer experience improvements? Show
What is a mystery shopper?A mystery shopper, or a secret shopper, is a person who is hired to audit a company to see if they meet standards. They can take on the role of a customer and feedback on their experience, or they can observe and provide a score. This person is unknown to the employees of the organization, so there is no bias or favor shown towards them. This ensures that the mystery shopper can get a clear account of what a customer would experience. To truly understand the customer experience, the employees cannot know they are serving a mystery shopper. Who hires them?Mystery shoppers are common in retail sectors, where customer service can’t be measured easily by an internal manager or colleague. They are also frequently hired to make evaluations for hotels, airlines, restaurants, and in practically every industry that depends on an in-location experience. What do they do?There are many standards that a company wants to uphold. A mystery shopper is hired to help audit a business against these standards and give each organization a score. Their task could involve long periods of time (like staying in a hotel) or could be a quick task (like reviewing a display stand for correct labeling of items). They may also be asked to interact with employees, take photos as evidence of their findings, or to notice certain things (like if there is good lighting near products). Whatever their task, they will be gathering information and assessing their experience against a set of predefined questions to measure the customer’s experience. The results will be submitted and fed back to help the hiring company judge their location or site against their own standards or goals. They can be submitted by completing an online or mobile survey, or paper forms. Advantages and disadvantages of using a mystery shopper serviceThe advantages of using mystery shoppers:
The disadvantages of using mystery shoppers:
What questions to ask in a mystery shopper audit?Mystery shopper survey questions can help explore several themes:
The key to focusing on the right standards and asking the right questions is to keep in mind the purpose of mystery shoppers; which is to understand the gap between brand promise and reality. The questions or standards should center around whether a piece of the brand promise was met or not, from product through employees performance through emotional IQ. Surveys should use mainly closed questions requiring ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answers, sometimes noted as “meet” or “did not meet”. This gives clear quantifiable data that can be understood quickly and tallied up against other results. However, using open-ended questions (Who, What, Where, When, Why, How?) are useful for getting more detail, especially when assessing employee interactions. Your survey could provide space to expand on the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ answer when necessary. Questions can be specifically grouped by categories, to make sure enough focus has gone into exploring the area. If we use the example of a mystery shopper going into a retail store to buy a sandwich, some question examples would be: Store appearance
Employees performance
Product
Purchasing experience
Go beyond mystery shopping to improve the experienceMystery shopper audits can help you understand the gap between the expectations the brand may have set for a customer and what is actually happening. It's a high-definition camera that showcases every detail. But it’s a single point in time that doesn’t give you the valuable context you need to make decisions. Alternatively, customer or guest satisfaction surveys can look at the ongoing customer experience from the perspective of actual customers. This is like taking a continuous video of the customer experience. The image may be a little blurrier but you have data that is supported by more than a single person's report. Mystery shopper and customer experience surveys when used together can help an organization assess their true performance and make changes to close the gap between customer expectations and reality. |