Tag: mystery shopping

Confero’s 25 years in the customer experience research field has allowed us to interact with various industries over the years.  With our experience in so many diverse industries, we apply knowledge to new projects in unique ways.  Here’s a list of 25 types of businesses that Confero has worked with over the decades, by providing them with services including onsite, telephone-recorded and email mystery shops, competitive pricing studies, retail audits, brand representation at retail, and customer satisfaction surveys:

We are pleased to announce that Confero was recently named winner in the Stevie Award category, “Customer Service or Call Center Consulting Practice of the Year.”   Confero learned that it was a contender for the award last month, and the final results were revealed on Monday, Feb. 21 at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Fla.  This award is particularly meaningful to Confero’s customer service team because it recognizes the team’s delivery of quality solutions in 2010, including many which involved quick turnaround times and tough requirements.

Call centers spend significant amounts of time and money training associates on delivering a friendly and empathetic approach.   The Wall Street Journal reports that some companies now go one step further and reevaluate the voicethat initially greets customers.  These companies believe that with a friendlier, more inviting voice, they increase the chance that customers will stay within the automated system rather than trying to reach a live operator, which saves companies money.   Alflac, for example, recently brought on a new voice with a calm, hometown feel for its initial greeting.  The company reports a 7% increase in customer satisfaction with the automated system since implementing the new voice.

Restaurants, grocery stores and banks all have something in common – an employee dress code.  Some companies, such as UBS in Sweden, have traditionally taken dress codes to higher levels.  A 44-page guide for employees contains specific directives about employee nail care, glasses and even underwear.  Recently, though, UBS announced that it will change its strict policies to more practical dress guidelines.  While most companies don’t manage company appearance down to such small details, many have some type of code in place, whether it includes wearing name tags or collared shirts, or directing employees not to wear jeans, nose rings or multiple earrings. 

Back in the 1980’s, one of our early mystery shopping clients was a McDonald’s franchisee. When our CEO, Elaine Buxton, met with him to discuss our quality review process, she explained that all reports would reflect the utmost professional language. She gave the example stating the review team would change a phrase like “She took her sweet time” to something more professional sounding, such as  “She was slow in approaching the drive up window.”  That wise client taught us an early and valuable lesson: don’t change the tone of what the shopper communicates in verbatim comments. As he so aptly put it, “I can picture exactly what happened when I read “she took her sweet time”, so keep those types of comments in, please. We learned a lot from that client, including how to guide a quality review team  to strike a balance between flavor and tone, content and quality.