Tag: mystery shopping reports

Change how you share mystery shopping outcomes with the team and improve results for future mystery shops.

Many clients receive emails with a link to the mystery shop result. Sometimes, managers forward or comment on the mystery shop, and copy a Confero team member, so we see their coaching comments to staff. The variety of feedback we see in terms of positive and negative coaching is eye opening!

What makes for action-oriented coaching for both good and bad mystery shopping results?

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.
    

Here at Confero, we get lots of questions from mystery shoppers asking how they can improve their shop ratings.  One easy way to improve your shop rating is to make sure you are providing a clean, concise mystery shop report every time.  Here is a list of the Top Six Mistakes to Avoid When Completing a Mystery Shop Report:

1. Copying and pasting shop information.   Each mystery shop is unique, so each mystery shop report should be unique to each individual shop.  Our clients do not accept reports with copied or “canned”comments, as they expect each unique mystery shop/audit visit’s conversation to be reported individually. That’s what they are paying for. Copied or canned comments imply that the mystery shopper did not make the required observations or give them full attention.  For more details about this, see Cathy Stucker’s blog about all the “Dangers of Copy and Paste.”

A:  Allow time for consideration of mystery shop goals, survey question details and possible scenarios during the set up of a new mystery shopping program .

B:  Build on the information that you gain from your mystery shops so that you can improve and redirect your program periodically.

C:  Customize your mystery shopper survey to reflect your firm’s unique service and sales priorities.
 

Confero is excited to introduce guest blogger, Cathy Stucker. Cathy is the author of The Mystery Shopper’s Manual, the best selling guide to being a successful professional mystery shopper and blogs about the mystery shopping industry on her blog, The Mystery Shopper's Manual.  Confero President, Elaine Buxton first met Cathy several years ago during a Gold Shopper Certification seminar held by the MSPA when Cathy was working as a trainer for the Gold Certification program.    

 by Cathy Stucker, MysteryShoppersManual.com

You just got back from shopping three locations of the same client. Each assignment used the same scenario, and they all went pretty much the same way. The temptation is to write the comments and narrative for the first shop, then copy and paste your words into the other two reports. A few changes of names and other details and you’re done, right?

Wrong! Although recycling is a good thing, recycling comments and narratives in your mystery shop reports is not. Not only do some shoppers do this when they shop multiple locations of a company in the same day, they may copy and paste comments from shops done for the same client in previous months, or even shops done for competing businesses in the same industry. I even heard about one shopper who copied and pasted comments from the sample report provided by the mystery shopping company.