Mystery shopping ‘creating a competitive
adavantage’
Mystery shopping will help you gain extra sales through excellent service.
Top quality customer
service has at least four prime benefits:
It creates a bond between an organisation and
its customers that will result in customer satisfaction and loyalty
It widens the sales base - a satisfied customer
is more likely to consider buying a new or additional product/service from the
same source
It measures the effectiveness of staff training
It monitors compliance with legal regulations
To meet the
criteria of excellence, it is important to monitor and measure the service
aspects on offer and if necessary to take immediate corrective action.
Mystery shopping works
because: it focuses on core factors – it is relevant; it is precise; it enables
you to monitor if good practice procedures are followed; it identifies poor
performance and training needs; it shows if your expectations are realized and
shows trends; but most importantly it delivers information to help you take
relevant, focused action. It can also investigate how your business compares
with the competition
Mystery shopping can include
personal visits, telephone calls, mail, web-based services (site accessibility,
product ordering, accuracy of order, confirmation and delivery,
correspondence).
What you need to know
The precise content of an
assessment is developed by Precision: Retail Research in conjunction with the
client and can cover a wide range of issues, including:
-
positioning and visibility of display material
- appearance/appeal of a branch, is everything working
properly
- stock availability and price marking
- product knowledge, presenting benefits, observing
regulations and procedures
- selling skills, cross selling, up selling, returning
goods and complaints
- staff attitude, happy welcoming, interested in and
listening to customers
- service levels, the atmosphere, length of queues and
paying for goods
- comparisons with other leading retailers
Checking that goods are not
sold to young people is a growing area of our work, and products monitored
include alcohol, cigarettes, certain videos and sharp items.
Mystery shopping ‘disabled
issues’ is an area of increasing focus: was access satisfactory; was it easy to
move around; were any staff patronizing; were aids available and working; was
information provided in a helpful and considerate manner?
How
Mystery shopping works
Mystery shopping is often
used in conjunction with other market research techniques, depending on the
issues being evaluated, but here we concentrate on the specific technique of
mystery shopping. (If you wish to discuss a project, please call Roger Ollerton
on 0845 372 2277 - direct line.)
P:RR's 'shoppers' are
trained assessors and are thus able to provide an objective assessment, they
are profiled on our data base so will fit your customer profile.
A programme of telephone
and/or email mystery shopping could also be run in conjunction with shop
visits.
Displaying
results
Analysis can be provided at
company level, by area and down to individual branch level. Results can be in
your hands within days of fieldwork.
We recommend using a
weighted index score for each question: this is summarized to show an overall
performance out of 100. So, for example, a branch manager could easily
recognise that with a score of 76% for his/her branch compared to an
overall average of 84%, his/her branch is definitely lagging behind! Displaying
the index score by sections into, say, branch appearance, selling skills and
other criteria, is also advisable.
All our reports are bespoke
to clients’ needs - for example, the chief executive will require a different
level of detail from the store manager.
All our reports can be multi-level. We make specific recommendations
telling you what we’d do if we were in your place.
Precision Retail Research
Barclays House
Gatehouse
Way
Aylesbury
HP 19 8DB
Tel:
0845 371 6116