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 is helpful, couldn’t a more in-depth look at your competitor’s business be more useful? Truly what you are seeking is actionable competitive intelligence.
Competitive Intelligence Comes from Mystery Shopping
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. Customer experience measurement is vital information to have both for your own business and very helpful competitor information to create your action plan, isn’t it?
One way to mystery shop is to use your own employees as mystery shoppers. This is beneficial in several ways. While it does help you gather information on your competitor, it also exposes your own employees to the competition. They look critically as mystery shoppers and compare their current actions, practices and product offerings to what they see. Many times, your employees will report both simple and previously unseen business improvement action steps to be taken for your business.
Here are Ideas to Put a Competitor Mystery Shop Evaluation Plan into Action:
- Distribute mystery shopping survey forms to employees from each location.
- Review the survey questions and discuss why each area is important to the success of your store.
- Employees choose a competitor to visit. The competitor can be one that they hear about from customers, one that has a new offer, or a competitor that is new to the area. If you lose sales to a certain competitor, make their location a priority visit.
- Associates record what they observed and heard during their interaction.
- Employees should consider how their location ranks against the competition. Did the competitor’s employees say and do things that they felt contributed to great service? Did the competitor’s service include some of the same standards as their own? Did they include something in a product presentation that was attention-grabbing and effective?
- You may also want your employees to call prior to the visits. How well does their location’s phone skills measure up to the competition? Are telephone standards too low? Are they high enough to differentiate themselves from the competition?
- Review the business intelligence with other employees to gain their feedback.
- Develop an action plan to emphasize your strengths over the competition. As an example, you can design a chart that compares features and benefits of your service vs. those of your competitor. Employees can use this information – not to talk negatively about the competition – but to emphasize areas where their services outperform the competition.
Additionally, Confero suggests that you also mystery shop your competitor’s website and social media presence carefully. With business not only being conducted face to face but online, both should be evaluated with mystery shops.
Confero’s Competitive Intelligence Experience Can Give Your Business an Edge!
If you are uncertain about how to create a mystery shop questionnaire or to implement a mystery shop program of your competitors, Confero’s experienced team can assist you with this. We offer different levels of service for brand audits – both of your own business and your competition. Whether you would like help with developing an insightful and practical mystery shop survey for your employees to complete or someone to design, to manage and to report findings of one, our team with a combined over 100 years in the business will help. Contact Confero.
Using your own employees and a carefully tailored mystery shop form can allow you to understand and evaluate the competition’s strengths and weaknesses objectively.
Competitive Intelligence Action Item –
Mystery shop to fully understand what your competitor’s customer experience offering is like. Then, use the information and insights you discover to exceed them!
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