January 1st has come and gone, but it's not too late to assess where you are and where you need to be for 2015. Here's a checklist of things to double check to ensure mystery shoppers are reporting on the way you will operate your business in 2015.
1. Include the Digital Interaction: For stores and restaurants offering a buy online pick up in store (BOPIS) or tablet ordering type scenario, include a technology element in your mystery shops. How do associates assist customers with technology if needed? Are all well trained to field questions and encourage its use?
2. Measure What’s Important: Do mystery shop survey questions reflect what is most important for employees to do? If not, make adjustments to the survey, so that information is meaningful to you and employees.
3. Summarize: Rather than digging for info and creating your own reports, use Confero’s reporting tools to summarize the most relevant results. Focus on the behaviors that drive the scores. Need help choosing which reports to run from our system? Your Confero Client Services Manager will be happy to review reports with you, and show you how we may be able to save you time.
4. Peer to Peer Competition: Reports allow you to compare your units’ results to scores of others, so you can communicate how associates are doing compared to others, building healthy competition. Comparing also allows for shared experiences and best practices.
5. Highlight the Good and Bad: Reveal where associates excelled, and highlight actions that need improvement. For example, if all provided a friendly greeting, compliment this. If very few called the customer by name, point out the benefits of using the customers’ names and coach for improvement.
6. Add Excitement: Keep it exciting and new with performance incentives that motivate teams. With rewards, teams are more likely to have an interest in how they are doing and will want to learn what they need to do to win. Example: Offer a monthly reward for specific successes. Reward the team so everyone maintains interest.
7. Add More Elements: If you do not measure how well your associates handle an important customer interaction such as a return, consider adding the scenario to your program. Are employees handling returns according to company expectations? If not, what training is needed?
8. Increase the Weight of a Question: Sometimes shops reveal an area of opportunity across the board for all locations. Do stores consistently miss on greeting customers when they are within five feet? If yes, think about adding an incentive for those who score perfectly in this area during the quarter. Or, consider weighting this question more heavily. This makes a bigger impact on the shop score, and brings more attention to it.
9. Research Competition: How well does the competition meet your sales standards? Do your competitors excel in areas where your associates struggle? Implement competitor mystery shops during 2015 to see how you compare.
10. Revamp Telephone Shops: Do your telephone shops capture all elements and expectations for telephone interactions? Take a look at your survey to see if you need to add factors such as hold times, timeliness of a return call, asking for and using the customer name, and associate friendliness.
These are only a few suggestions. Be creative when looking at ways to improve your program! Do you have ideas that have worked well with mystery shopping results communication? Add a comment – we would love to hear about it!