Tag: competitive intelligence

Mystery Shops Have Uncovered Surprises – “When I visited the branch, the employee told me to wait to open an account since the merger process was not complete. “ That would be an unanticipated revelation revealed with a mystery shop to a bank manager, right? Imagine that you are the bank manager reading this mystery […]

Mystery Shop Your Competition? Why would our business want to do that? Admit it. Every now and then, when you are online browsing your competitor’s webpage. Why are you doing that? You want to see what they are doing and how they are doing things differently compared to your business, right? While perusing things online […]

Confero’s Growth & Culture Reflect Our Founder, Joann Buxton’s Leadership If you were fortunate enough to know JoAnn Buxton and are familiar with the company she began, you will easily see that the company’s congenial determined go get it nature, the attention to detail coupled with strong financial management and valuing others are all a […]

1. In person, one on one:  One of the best ways to gain impact from mystery shops is to meet with employees one-on-one to discuss results.  If an employee does not score well on a shop, managers need to coach the employee privately. They can discuss ways to improve the customer interaction and also the employee’s concerns with any of the mystery shop expectations.
    
2. Email:  Companies send summary emails about regional and company performance within each mystery shopping area to keep everyone on the right track.  Highlighting the high-scoring areas compliments employees, while detailing often-missed sections lets employees know where to place more effort.
    
3. Staff meetings:  Whether at the unit, regional, or district level, staff meetings provide good opportunities to discuss mystery shop outcomes and improvement strategies for the more difficult areas of the mystery shop. For example, if many associates struggle with a closing question, use a staff meeting to brainstorm ideas about asking for the business. If some employees hesitate to refer customers to other departments, dig deeper into the reasons to develop process improvements.
    

Competitive Reasons

1. Measure your competition’s phone skills.  You may know how well your employees handle incoming phone requests for information on your company, but do you know how effective the competition’s employees are during phone experiences? Gathering intelligence with competitive mystery shops allows you to measure how well your employees stack up against the competition.

2. Assess competitors’ in-person customer service.  It’s equally important to know how your employees rank against the competition in terms of in person customer service experiences. Are there areas where the competition is “wowing” the customers?  If so, is it enough to make customers want to buy from the competitor company rather than your company?

3. Learn about competitive product/service offerings.  Many times, it isn’t easy to gather information on competitor offers. With competitive mystery shops, mystery shoppers pose as regular customers and therefore can gather objective information on the latest competitor products and services.