Tag: competition

Competitive intelligence helps companies retain and add new customers. Confero often executes competitor studies on a large scale, but individual stores can also conduct competitive analysis locally and effectively. One way is to use your own employees as mystery shoppers.  Here are ideas to put a competitor evaluation plan into action:

The holiday season brings out more examples of how competitive the retail landscape is in a sluggish economy.   For example, stores start well before the traditional start of the holiday season to advertise offers.  They hope that by starting earlier, they will entice customers to purchase from them, as opposed to the competition.  Another reason stores increase early efforts is the fear that customers will be more reluctant to spend as weeks go by.

While telephone mystery shop reports obviously do not capture the visual aspect of a customer interaction, they can be a cost-effective way to discover how your employees conduct themselves with customers. Better yet, recorded telephone mystery shops provide managers with the detailed information needed to coach employees, since the recording allows you to review both sides of the conversation with the employee. There are many ways that companies improve operations through the use of telephone shops. Here are ten: