It’s fair to say that business owners of any size are always looking at ways to improve customer service delivery, right? But not enough take proactive steps to measure the customer buying experience in an objective manner which will subsequently grow and achieve excellent customer satisfaction.

Mystery Shopping exercises allow business owners to get quick, reliable and quality feedback from the customers’ perspective – as that’s the perspective that matters most. It is an invaluable tool in aiding the evaluation of teams’ customer care performance levels, training budgets and delivery of a company’s mission statement to their core customer sector.

Here’s the 5 biggest benefits Mystery Shopping can have to your business…

1. Analysis of competitors:

• It allows you to get a better knowledge of who your nearest competitors are, their pricing structure and their U.S.P.
• You may identify market niches that are not occupied by any of your competitors.

2. Review of internal processes and procedures

• Mystery shopper exercises can help to document step by step the process of the customer buying experience when buying your services /products or seeking customer support.
• You can detect deficiencies and make alterations to your customer care charter to the benefit of your customers.

3. Evaluate Staff Performance

• Mystery Shopping can be used as a training aid as it will highlight professionalism, product knowledge, integrity, appearance, and helpfulness of your team during the buying process and how they perform when the owner or management are not around.
• Buyers not only buy your services/products, they also buy your team and their credibility.

4. Evaluating Point of Sale Material and The Retail Store

• Mystery Shoppers will analyse the overall shopping experience including the cleanliness of the ‘retail store’, the tidiness of the products displayed, the space allocated to your products in the store, Point of Sale merchandise, even the ease of use of your website/online buying process.
• It is important to know how your Point of Sale looks when management is not present.

5. Review customer brand perceptions

• Brands want to be associated with specific values and qualities, and these feel good factors should be perceived by buyers through your team, processes, products and establishments. For example, if you’re going to buy a watch for £1,000+, you would expect an elitist shop, with a dedicated team that provides you with a top-class buying experience. If one of the elements of the buying process is not there, you will probably not buy the watch.
• Mystery Shopping exercises will indicate to you if your buyers are perceiving the brand image that you want them to or, if you need to invest more in this field.

These 5 ways can be integrated into 1 mystery shopping exercise. Mystery shopping can analyse and objectively measure staff interactions, the quality of your establishments and the buying experience across your entire company and there are plenty of Mystery Shopper companies around for you to utilise.