What do customers think about your business at each location? Does it match your expectations? What about on social media or your website? Have you audited telephone communications? Confero, a reliable experienced customer research service company, can assist with all of these essential business success questions and more.
First, why is this important? Don’t customers already give companies feedback? Yes, customers definitely are empowered in this internet age to voice their opinions. However if you look closely, most of the feedback you receive are typically from your satisfied repeat customers and your most disgruntled customers, right? Even if you average those together, is that an accurate image of the average service that your team is offers? Averaging internet input isn’t a very accurate understanding of your your business’s daily customer experiences.
Why Does a Business Need to Evaluate Whether They are Delivering on Our Brand Promise?
Consider your own personal consumer knowledge. Which store in town never has enough checkers? Can you name the store can you always find help? Which fast food drive through is the quickest? Understandably, known customer impressions like these are difficult for business owners to see in their own businesses.
When your company is pouring lots of effort and money into advertising, do you want to know that you are maximizing your return on investment? Of course! How do you evaluate this?
How do you know if your employee trainings are building your business? You test it with real life interactions. Essentially, are the atmosphere, information and customer experience of your business locations building or diminishing your brand’s value?
The way to gauge how your marketing, brand and service work as intended is to evaluate through in-depth customer research. This allows you to reward those employees that are meeting and exceeding expectations and to retrain employees that aren’t upholding brand standards.
What is Observational Customer Experience Research?
Observational customer research is the capturing of typical customer interactions, whether marketing materials were displayed, checkout wait times, were employees knowledgeable on the latest special, how clean were your store front and restrooms, did your employees card a young customer attempting to purchase alcohol and much more can be learned with secret shopper research.
Online it can be valuable for mystery shoppers to evaluate with fresh eyes and record their experiences, as well. Are your store hours accurately reflected on your website can be pain points for customers that are easily overlooked by staff.
For example, Confero has been hired by large business to evaluate both their individual store websites and for mystery shoppers to call their locations with questions to evaluate their phone service levels. Within 30 seconds Confero shared that they didn’t have a published phone number on their website for mystery shoppers to even call their store locations. Major oversight, that as humans, is only too easy to make, right?
Confero is a Reliable Experienced Customer Research Service Company?
Confero is a second generation woman run company. At the beginning, JoAnn Buxton began the company and now, Elaine Buxton, her daughter, continues the tradition of helping businesses conduct customer research while giving mystery shoppers side hustle opportunities.
In this Better Business Bureau podcast series, they focus on the intersection of trust and community being the foundation of good business. When they reached out to interview our CEO, Elaine Buxton, she was happy to sit down with them.
Hear for yourself as they discuss what our industry does and the observational research conducted. Our CEO explains in this interview more about how Confero helps other businesses serve their customers better. The focus of Confero’s customer research is to identify what is going well and what is going poorly: then, to use this customer research information to improve and to grow. Listen in to understand more about how Confero helps other businesses.
More about – Confero. and Confero’s Reputation.
What Types of Businesses Does Confero Work With?
Currently, grocery stores, brew pubs, movie theaters, jewelry stores, valet services, massage services, car wash, oil change locations, many types of restaurants and more businesses across the United States have Confero secret shoppers auditing services provided. All types of businesses are Confero’s clients.
We work with banks, legal services, hospitals, airports, education services, military bases, many types of retail or service companies and a wide variety of clients. Since beginning in 1986, our evaluations have helped businesses improve. With over 100 years of combined experience, our staff does an excellent job of tailoring research questionnaires to each business while observing the details that are important to your business success.
Helpful Links to Evaluate How Confero Can Improve Your Business –
Here is a sampling of some industries that Confero has worked with over the years and links to learn more about services offered: Restaurant & Hospitality, Retail & Grocery, Travel & Entertainment, Medical & Legal, Banking & Financial, Automotive Sales & Service, Education & Campus Services and Government & Regulatory.
You may find it helpful to see what types of success other businesses have had with Confero’s customer experience research. So, here are links to Case Studies and to Testimonials.
What Types of Customer Experience Research Does Confero Offer Businesses?
In-depth customer research is possible for any type of business. Here are a few of the different evaluation services that Confero offers – telephone mystery services, on site & online mystery shopping, social media monitoring, in store research, compliance audits and to reward employees incentives & motivation.
Also, we offer a way to use your website to convert your customers into mystery shoppers in exchange for a coupon or other consideration on site. Utilizing location services to target customers inside your businesses shopping, Confero can share a customer survey right there and then.
When Should a Business Start Customer Experience Audits? How Often Conduct After Initial Audit?
As you may expect, this answer varies industry to industry. However, generally any time of year is good to sample your customer service offerings. You may want to consider sampling prior to your busy season to both reward stellar employees and tweak employee training as needed.
How often should Confero review if your company is delivering on your brand promise and the level of customer service you are offering customers? Answering this question leads to more questions of our own to determine the best level of service for you. Since this may varies from industry to industry, what is your level of customer turnover or what level of employee turnover do you have? Obviously the higher the turnover, the more often you would want to evaluate service offerings.
How & Where Does Customer Research Take Place?
Where and when do you meet your customers? That’s where evaluations are most effective and happen. Independent contracted secret shoppers use original tailored questionnaires, timelines to perform evaluation, details to note, photos to take, etc. Then, they shop your business like everyone else covertly snapping photos and recording their observations via secure phone apps.
When your staff is interacting with a secret shopper, they should not know that this is a secret shopper. Candid observations of daily customer interactions is the goal of all customer experience research.
Since Covid impacted the way much of business is conducted, customer evaluations should be done on all the new expanded services you offer. Now, customers expect curb-side pickup, app ordering and other evolved services to meet their expectations. These should also be evaluated by secret shoppers.
What Do Confero Reports Look Like and How is the Information Presented to Help Improve Businesses?
The mystery shopper responses to your tailored questionnaire are gathered into useable reports. These show in detail how each location performed and give you an overall understanding of how well your brand promises are being kept across all locations. Worthwhile and actionable information, right?
If you are unfamiliar with mystery shopping or in depth customer research services, you may not know what to expect. It may be helpful for you to look through some shared sample reports. Here’s a link to a few of those.
How to Begin a Program for Your Business?
Customer research can be quite complicated and daunting. Therefore, experience matters with both gathering and utilizing what your research uncovers. Where would you begin the process to evaluate the service level your business offers? Reach out to Confero about our tailored performance auditing services today. Let’s chat to see if Confero can help your business improve and grow by maximizing what you have already established. Contact Confero by clicking here.
Experience for yourself how Confero, a reliable experienced customer research service company, can assist with customer research audits for your brand marketing, customer service and more.
