What are some helpful tips to keep your mystery shopping program fresh? Also, why should you care to keep your mystery shopper program refreshed?
Questions to Consider as You Consider Your Next Round of Confero Mystery Shop Business Evaluation:
Just like using the same tool like scissors repeatedly, the edges dull and their effectiveness diminishes. This is why it is important to review, revamp, rethink and re- incentivize mystery shop programs.
How has your business changed since your first mystery shop evaluation questionnaire? Covid impacted and permanently changed the way things happen in most marketplaces. Has your business added an app that allows patrons to interact with your locations for purchases or reservations? Do your locations or chain utilize social media? How is that integrated into the shopping experience? Do you now offer a loyalty program? All these new approaches to business building should be a part of your mystery shopper business evaluation questionnaire, right?
Utilize Your Mystery Shop Business Evaluation in Different Ways
Additionally, wouldn’t it be terrific if one tool could be utilized in different ways? A mystery shop business evaluation can be! Confero’s mystery shop evaluations work to give you a clearer understanding of your everyday customer experiences in your retail locations. Also, our reports will give you insight into which retail locations are maximizing advertising materials, doing a great job with customer service, following mandatory compliance laws well, the true cleanliness standards of your retail locations will be revealed and more. It goes without saying, that employees who are doing a great job will shine in the reports. Areas that need a bit of retraining or attention will also be made clear.
One tip to keep your mystery shop program fresh is to utilize results to reward employees. This is a major plus to have store employees welcome the program.
Tips to Keep Your Mystery Shop Program Fresh:
- Add Excitement: Keep it exciting and new with performance incentives that motivate teams. With rewards, teams are more likely to have an interest in how they are doing and will want to learn what they need to do to win. Example: Offer employee recognition and on the spot rewards. Reward the entire team so everyone maintains interest.
- Include the Digital Interaction: For stores and restaurants offering a buy online pick up in store (BOPIS) or tablet ordering type scenario, include a technology element in your mystery shops. Also for stores or restaurants asking shoppers to order or to check out using self serve kiosks, how does store staff support these processes? Overall, how do associates assist customers with technology if needed? Are all well trained to field questions and encourage its use?
- Summarize: Rather than digging for info and creating your own reports, use Confero’s reporting tools to summarize the most relevant results. Focus on the behaviors that drive the scores. Need help choosing which reports to run from our system? Your Confero Client Services Manager will be happy to review reports with you and show you how we may be able to save you time.
- Peer to Peer Competition: Reports allow you to compare your units’ results to scores of others, so you can communicate how associates are doing compared to others, building healthy competition. Comparing also allows for shared experiences and best practices.
- Highlight the Good and Bad: Reveal 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 coach for improvement.
- Add More Elements: If you do not measure how well your associates handle an important customer interaction such as a return, consider adding the scenario to your program. Are employees handling returns according to company expectations? If not, what training needed?
- Increase the Weight of a Question: Sometimes shops reveal an area of opportunity across the board for all locations. Do stores consistently miss on greeting customers when they are within five feet? If yes, think about adding an incentive for those who score perfectly in this area during the quarter. Or, consider weighting this question more heavily. This makes a bigger impact on the shop score and brings more attention to it.
- Research Competition: How well does the competition meet your sales standards? Do your competitors excel in areas where your associates struggle? Implement competitve and business intelligence during 2025 to see how you compare.
- Revamp Telephone Mystery Shopping: Do your telephone shops capture all elements and expectations for telephone interactions? Take a look at your survey to see if you need to add factors such as hold times, timeliness of a return call, asking for and using the customer name, and associate friendliness.
Rewarding Yourself with A Fresh Look at Your Real World Customer Experience
By recognizing good efforts to assist customers through the results your mystery shopping survey based incentives, it focuses employee attention on good service. Tips for keeping your mystery shopper program fresh keeps it relevant and informative.
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Summary
Service Type
Designing and Implementing Customer Audits Utilizing Mystery Shoppers
Provider Name
Confero, Inc., Telephone No.800-326-3880
Area
United States
Description
What are some helpful tips to keep your mystery shopping program fresh? Also, why should you care to keep your mystery shopper program refreshed? Do these questions pique your interest? Read on to rethink your current mystery shop program, what actionable information it gives you and how the results can be implemented. If interested, Confero would be happy to discuss tailoring or revamping a current competitive business intelligence gathering program for your business.