BrainTrust Query: Mystery Shops – Retail’s Service Checkup
The number one thing business owners tell me is, "I just need more customers." Wrong, you need them to return. You can’t attract your whole neighborhood to try your store, deliver lousy results and then expect just getting "more bodies in the door" will work. For many retailers, customer service is a poster in the break room and a slogan.
You can burn through a neighborhood with bad word-of-mouth and, without mystery shoppers, never know it.
What’s one of the big reasons Five Guys is wildly successful? They send mystery shoppers out twice a week to all locations. The brothers who run the operation also constantly visit the restaurants. They recognize that it’s not what your regulars tell you, it’s what the new customers tell you that matters most.
And one shop every six months is so random that it reveals little. Why? Because a mystery shop is just a moment in time. But over time patterns emerge that make managing your customer experience much clearer.
But not all mystery shopping companies are the same. One client of mine told me how he found the shoppers had never even been to his store. Another said she’d tried mystery shoppers but it "didn’t work." Her survey came screaming off the page as to why it wasn’t successful because every question was subjective. "Did you feel valued as a guest?" "Did they attempt to meet your needs?" "Did you feel welcomed?" Shoot me!
Questions on a mystery shop need to be black and white. The employee either did or didn’t say, good morning, good afternoon or good evening. They either described a product using features (it has) with benefits (to the customer) or they didn’t. In addition, you need a narrative so compelling you can actually see the transaction in your store.
The final three questions I always ask at the end are the most important. One of mine is, "Would you be willing to drive past a competitor to return to this location based on the service you received today?"
Also, when you use a mystery shopping company, don’t print it out and stick it on the employee bulletin board. Good or bad, it should be gone over with a supervisor in private, determining who did what, when, and eventually with the associates at the store level.
Discussion Questions
What are some core elements to running an effective mystery shopping program? What are some common shortcomings or missteps in orchestrating such efforts?
Mystery shopping works; at least at one retailer I know, where employees live with a constant fear that a problem customer could in reality be a mystery shopper. Theoretically, that is a good thing, but perhaps making the store a great place to work would have the same effect?
Mystery shopping can now be turned into a much more powerful tool. We have a client who has the mystery shopper snap a few photos of 2-3 merchandising efforts that are underway at the time of the visit. We can then transform those into products, positions, conditions and facings and compare them to the plan.
This turns the mystery shop from a one dimensional measurement of how ready store personnel are to receive customers, into a multi-dimensional mechanism reporting how well the shelf and the products are meeting customer needs. Everyone has a camera!
Mystery shopping programs are largely ineffective. Mystery shoppers are generally untrained and often unfit for the type of shop they are shopping. The standards used are often decoupled from the retailer’s operational practices. Results are easily manipulated. The list goes on. You are paying for peace of mind and all you get is a false sense of security and very little in the way of actionable results.
Many retailers are better off sending their own district managers (sometime sending a district manager from a different district) and/or interviewing shoppers at the door. But don’t take my word for it; we recently posed this question to a wide audience on LinkedIn and the results speak for themselves.
Mystery shopping does not work. Send your district managers to stores and/or interview shoppers at the door. Most successful brands in retail do exactly that.
Always glad to see mystery shopping getting some well-deserved press. Thank you Bob for the article. To give you the big three we see all the time — and quite frankly the difference between successful programs (and in turn successful companies), it generally comes down to a few things:
1. Inspiration vs Carrot & Stick
The best programs are ones that inspire everyone at all levels. Using the information and sharing the success stories across the stores, districts and regions makes a difference. This opposed to many programs that are really just “audits” that produce short term success by rewarding for good and punishing for bad behavior. The latter might produce results for a limited period of time, but in the long run hurt the company and make the program go by the wayside. This becomes a wasted investment and even worse damages the culture.
2. Objective vs Subjective Form Design
Whenever we take over a program we usually find the first point of failure was a poorly designed form. Mystery Shopping measures the true brand experience. What was supposed to happen-and did or did not from an operational level. Too often companies get this confused with what a customer satisfaction survey is all about — which measures how customers felt about the experience. The beauty of the objectivity is that it allows you to have a smaller sample size and gives the opportunity to pinpoint the exact behavior that either contributed or detracted from the brand experience. This makes it much easier to give feedback, train and manage. Leave the subjective stuff for your customers to answer — not a mystery shopper.
3. Frequency
Quarterly mystery shopping might be better than no mystery shopping; however it is really not a program, it is more of a project. There is a balance between too little and too much, but we always tell clients that they are better off shopping less stores more frequently than all stores less frequently. Think of how boring a basketball game would be if you were only seeing the score once a quarter or once a half? The same with mystery shop results. In order for locations to improve they need more data points. Certainly monthly, and when budgets allow even more so.
Again glad to see mystery shopping being mentioned. It really is a no-brainer for any company, any size. Like many things, if not done correctly it can do more harm than good. However when approached in the right manner it can make a world of difference. One other thing-mystery shopping is not a panacea-nor are customer satisfaction surveys, focus groups, shopper intercepts, etc. There are many ways to measure, manage and improve the customer experience. Each tool has it benefits, but none do the job of all.
Fabien and Mike both make very good, and quite relevant points as to the strengths and weaknesses of mystery shopping programs.
Clear, intentional program design, aligned to operational objectives and employee behaviors can result in a powerful and robust channel of fact-based, actionable insights at reasonable cost.
To be sure, the quality of outcomes is highly dependent upon optimal design, consistent and thorough shopper selection and training as well as multi-phase quality control.
The proper analytics, including linkages to key customer satisfaction and financial performance metrics, result in high levels of client engagement and a data-informed organization.
Mystery shopping is the lazy way to run a retail operation. When you use mystery shops, every associate has been coached by script until it becomes automatic to answer in a scripted manner. Better to use customer surveys at the bottom of the receipt to check if standards are being met.
Mystery shopping is an incredible way to gather insights about whether or not operational standards are being met. The most important thing about developing a program or investing in a program is to ensure that you are using the most cutting edge technologies as proof of visit and validation of experience, otherwise the entire program could be undermined.
1. The provider should work with the client directly to understand the ideal customer experience. This means working with operations, marketing, HR, etc. to craft an instrument that is streamlined, understandable and coachable. That can be hard to do, as businesses today are frequently operate in divisional silos.
2. You must educate and certify that shoppers know what the ideal customer experience is, and then have them measure against that on the instrument.
3. Inconsistencies in shopper answers and narratives can undermine an entire program. Therefore, eliminate the inconsistencies. Send shoppers in armed with hidden camera equipment — or at the least, hidden audio. Nothing trains better than seeing and hearing the experience that the shopper sees. Worried about camera angles? Make sure that the provider you chooses offers a choice of button cameras or eyeglass cameras. Any errors or inconsistencies that the shopper inputs will easily be caught by the shopping company’s QC department and adjusted.
4. Don’t depend solely on IVR, Web, Text, or exit interviews to get information from your customers. Those surveys are good at measuring sentiment. Customers have lousy memories and aren’t trained to look for process and protocol. They just know whether they were satisfied/ unsatisfied.
5. Make sure that your shoppers provide ample proof of visit. This doesn’t just mean a business card. Take advantage of smart phone capabilities and geo fencing. Shoppers can prove that they were onsite through this technology.
Traditional mystery shopping is changing. Or, the technology to gather the information is changing. You have a mobile army, and you are deploying them to gather information. It is imperative to ensure they have the right equipment, and that the tool itself and the feedback provided is actionable. The best in class brands are deploying both ms programs, and customer feedback programs as part of their entire customer experience management systems.
The most important element is an objective design/approach used in the program as others have commented. Also, some programs try to cover as much as possible, so the mystery shopper is trying to remember/covertly record a long list of observations. Deciding what is truly significant in the consumer transaction is a challenge; getting it right pays off solidly when the information is communicated with the team, and recons to create a better experience are developed.
For front line workers, they have a continuing list of things to do; focus on the essential elements is critical. Reports and audits can be perceived by staff as annoying or negative when poorly communicated. All levels have to be actively involved to create the environment where customers feel valued — it happens more often when employees are part of the program, we count on them to make it happen!
Mystery shopping has grown up tremendously in the last few years. What was once a haphazard, inconsistent process executed by poorly trained shoppers has evolved into a professional value adding industry. Key players like Albatross, AQ Services and others now offer a highly trained workforce of shoppers and, utilizing technology, provide terrific near real-time results and customized analytics. Mystery shopping, when done intentionally and with the right partner, is anything but a “lazy” way to manage retail. Our program is specifically designed for our retail environment, is applicable in all our global locations, and provides our general managers with a terrific audit of our the staff and leader training and development efforts.
Here’s what I would do. Hire a mystery shopping company who takes this responsibility seriously, not just a way to make a quick buck. Review their questions and meet some of their newest shoppers. Meet them at the store when they go in, and when they come out. Go back in the store and introduce yourself to the same people who met the mystery shopper and interview them.