Mystery Shopping – If you are wondering why your business isn’t hitting the top spot despite being in the perfect location, having well-trained staff and offering competitive products and services, it’s probably because you are missing an important point: You haven’t done a customer experience evaluation.
Mystery shopping is a method where the business (or in this case community) hires someone to pretend to be a customer, in order to assess how the employees, accommodate shoppers. Employees are supposed to build rapport and eventually convince shoppers to make a purchase. Despite the name, there is nothing really mysterious about the process; it is only because the employees may not know their performance is being evaluated through a professional’s point of view (the mystery shopper). This is an effective way to read what a customer is thinking the moment he enters the store and how satisfied he is when he leaves. The mystery shopper will create a report that will be used to strengthen a business’s customer service.
Sometimes, no matter how well-trained your employees are, the thought of being evaluated or being observed makes them nervous. It puts them under great pressure and they tend to be too conscious of their actions, especially because a skill in sales is a learned behavior. Mystery shopping will allow them to perform naturally, and this helps a lot in bringing out the real picture. When an employee accommodates a customer spontaneously, it is easier to determine where the shortcoming lies. And when you know what’s wrong, this will eventually lead to better customer satisfaction. Aside from personal assistance, a mystery shopper may also evaluate an employee’s ability to relay information over the phone.
