Shopper Insight

Mystery Shop means different things to different people

Market prices start at circa. £50 per Mystery Shop for a high street shop assessment, and increase in price depending on complexity and the profile of the mystery shopper and supporting assets.  Mystery shop can be email or telephone assessments all the way to physical visits.  A couple of examples of Mystery Shop challenges including:

• Motorcycle brand: Videoing faults being set, assessing both the retail experience of the service centres as well as the technical ability to fix faults,
• Virtual Office Rental brand:  Assessing booking process, and service up-sell.

Our approach is to start all projects with a clean sheet to understand and confirm your organisational objectives, your research needs and project ROI.

For us the outputs of a Mystery Shop project are two fold:

1. Measurement of tangible hygiene factors, the customer experience,
2. Customer experience aligned to your Business outcomes.

We believe the Mystery Shop is a snap shot in time, the MOT test for one element of your Customer Journey, this in turn fits within your overview Customer Experience.

Rather than listing a specific service/price, we felt it might be more helpful to experience our approach using a recent Mystery Shop for a main dealer (retailer).  This example relates to the Service Department, this is called Aftersales in the Automotive Sector.

Example – German Vehicle Manufacturer

The Mystery Shop started with me running a few minutes late… not a good start… but the reality of many customers…

I approached the site, signage good, but many cars parked outside on double yellow lines… expectation low at this stage, parking is going to be a problem.

Drove into car park, immediately confronted with 5 spaces, wow excellent news.  Another customer drives in behind me looking for space, we both park quickly – success, feeling more positive now.

Locked car, walked towards reception.  Door obscured by vertical boards/signs, made it difficult to see door, other customers may need help finding the front door!

Opened door (pull), met by two receptionists? is one training?  Both smiled, made eye contact – they delivered a warm, friendly feeling.  I beat them to it and said I was heading for the Service Dept.  they smiled, didn’t respond.

Walked across the showroom, different layout to previous visit, looked like a race track grid line up… felt smart, cars raring to go… OK for me (middle aged bloke), but how does that feel for other customer profiles.

Booked vehicle in (detail in full report), experience fine.  Service person effective, but not wow, this was a job, not her passion.

I was directed to the waiting area, which had three other customers there already, too crowded.  I wanted to do some work, had laptop… nowhere to sit at a table – think hot desk, set-up could be better, again think Customer Profile.  Rather than sit with PC on my lap, decided to sit at unoccupied nearby sales desk.  Tried to access Wi-Fi, asked at reception for code… receptionist advised she had circulated last code to whole business, and was no longer trusted to have code!  Should I (the customer) be told this?  Receptionist offered to find code.

So how did this experience play out… well, it was OK.  Would I rave about it?  No.  Would I say negative things to friends and family? No.  The customer experience left me sitting on the fence.  Although the coffee was great… think of the competition… they are doing the same things… probably.

The question is, do you want to play the same game better, or do something to differentiate your offer?

Oh there was also a funny aspect which has only just happened.  As I’m typing this, the letter confirming my booking has just landed on my desk.  Sent second class…  hmm…  nice to receive confirmation, but I guess the reflection is; when a customer is making a booking, how do you engage/communicate? What is the timeline?  What is the experience… receiving confirmation after the event, is at best, a waste of energy, but possibly a demonstration of not thinking.

Do your staff just follow a process, or actively think about the outcomes they trigger?

Business Outcomes

I started by mentioning the Business Outcomes which we call the “end game”, well in this case, vehicle retailers are a distribution network to support vehicle manufacturers, who sell vehicles.  Yes the distributor needs to make a profit from all of their activities, but the raison d’etre of a network is to support new vehicle and original equipment part sales.

Therefore what could the experience have delivered that would have moved the customer further along the Customer Journey or Brand experience?

How would an aftersales customer feel if the service representative said, would you like:

• A great coffee in our customer area?
• A hot-desk in case you have some work to do, and here is your free Wi-Fi code? Or
• If you have 20 minutes, which vehicle in our demo fleet would you like to take out?

Now if that had been offered to me, I know I have some work to do, but hey, go for a drive in a different car – yes please!

So the business outcome for CSM would be step back, identify what you are trying to achieve, and review the customer experience against your business outcomes.

If your business outcome is increasing customer engagement with your brand, product or service… what is the tangible outcome?  What would that mean for your organisation?

Reporting

This type of insight can be reported very quickly via our online dashboard – InsightMonitor.  It means the mystery shopper becomes the data collection point, enabling quick reporting of pre-agreed performance indicators (KPI’s), examples may include: signage, welcome, communication, etc, supported by literal comments in one easy to access online portal.

Our systems mean you access the right information, to take action quickly, this may be praising positive staff or supporting individuals who are under performing.

Your Challenge

What’s your challenge?  Use the form (top right of this page) to either book an online demo of InsightMonitor, or a chat about your challenges, we are happy to share our thinking/approach…