Managers at the store and district level can be inundated with data and information. The metrics from various reports can be valuable tools to point toward areas of improvement, but there can be too much of a good thing.
“Last month, we averaged 91% on our mystery shops, scored higher in customer satisfaction ratings, and 50% of our responses were from mobile. Telephone mystery shop scores decreased by 10%, and our IVR percentage response rate fell by 2%. This was a 10% increase overall!”
Sound confusing? Reports, mystery shopping results, scorecards, CSAT data, sales numbers, customer counts, average check, accounts per customer, and other store stats can be staggering when you try to digest it all while running day to day operations at the same time. The information can be very valuable, but only if you act on it; and when you have too much data, acting on it becomes challenging.
At the store level, stats are worthless without a coach to personalize the information, relate it to the team, and translate it in a concise way to keep employees up to date. Here are five ways to make sense of mystery shop data.
1. Summarize: Rather than making your team dig through a lot of information, use shop reporting to summarize results most relevant for your store/stores. Focus on the behaviors that drive the scores.
2. Compare: Reports allow you to compare your units’ results to scores of others, so you can communicate to your teams how you measure up, building healthy competition. Comparing also allows for shared experience and best practices.
3. Highlight the Good and Bad: Point out areas 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 encourage improvement.
4. Give Incentives: Too much data causes managers to lose interest. Keep it exciting with performance incentives that motivate teams. With rewards, teams are more likely to want to know how they are doing, so that they learn what they need to do to win. Example: Offer on the spot rewards to associates who suggestively sell a promoted item in a customer-appropriate situation.
5. Measure the Right Things: Do your mystery shopping reports truly reflect what is most important for employees to do? If not, make adjustments to your mystery shop survey, so that all the data you gain is meaningful. Make sure there is no disconnect. For example: If the mystery shopping survey form measures if the guest is greeted within in 5 seconds, while the company standard has actually changed to 10 seconds, the metrics produced on the mystery shopping report won’t be valuable.
The key is to keep the data simple and easy for your busy teams. As the coach, you can make it actionable.
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