Mystery shopping is a powerful tool used by businesses to evaluate and improve customer service, operational efficiency, and overall customer experience. By employing individuals to act as regular customers, companies can gain valuable insights into their service delivery and identify areas for improvement. This guide delves into the fundamentals of mystery shopping, highlights its significance across various industries, and shows how you can leverage it to drive business success.
Mystery shopping is not just about identifying problems; it also highlights what a company is doing well, providing a balanced view of the customer journey. By simulating real-world shopping scenarios, businesses can obtain an authentic assessment of their service quality, helping them make informed decisions to enhance customer satisfaction.
Also, it’s a strategy that is crucial across a wide range of industries. In the retail sector, it helps ensure that customer service standards are consistently met, leading to improved customer loyalty and increased sales. For the hospitality industry, mystery shopping can evaluate guest experiences in hotels and restaurants, ensuring that service quality matches company promises and customer expectations.
In the automotive industry, mystery shopping can assess dealership interactions, from the initial customer greeting to the final sales pitch, ensuring that potential buyers receive a positive and informative experience. Similarly, in the financial services sector, it can help evaluate the effectiveness of customer service in banks and insurance companies, ensuring compliance with regulatory standards and customer expectations.
By implementing mystery shopping programs, businesses across these industries can gain a competitive edge, enhance their brand reputation, and drive customer loyalty. Ultimately, mystery shopping provides the insights needed to create exceptional customer experiences, fostering long-term business success.
Who is a mystery shopper?
A mystery shopper, or a “secret shopper”, usually works for a third-party company in order to assess a business’ overall service, employee friendliness, the quality of their products, regulatory compliance, and so much more. They can sometimes be used to get information on products in comparison to other competitive products. They can be used by-product or for service-based companies and gastronomic establishments. Many marketing researchers use mystery shoppers to measure the quality of sales and service, employee and product performance, and other specific information.
Mystery shoppers do not provide input into the business or company. They assess specific areas of a business, document their findings, and submit their assessments for analysis. This is so the business owner can experience their own company from a customer’s point of view. Secret shoppers are employed to go to an establishment, act as a customer, and purchase a good or service to get an accurate reading of how the company treats an every-day customer. This is to ensure employees are acting appropriately and providing goods and services of great quality.
The purpose of mystery shopping is to ensure that customers have good experiences with the company, and are therefore satisfied with the business as a whole. Mystery shopping helps identify where the business is lacking and tackle it. The company might struggle with customer service, lack organization in handling orders, or make avoidable mistakes with orders; these situations help identify errors the company is making and guide corrective measures to satisfy customers. Sometimes, third-party companies can also employ mystery shoppers to go check out what their competitors are doing and how they treat their customers. This helps the third party know their competitors’ customer service level, if they are matching up, and if there’s anything they could be doing better.
When employing secret shoppers, most companies look out for great communicators who pay precise attention to details and have excellent writing skills. This will enable the mystery shoppers to communicate with the employee, engage with the business, and also be able to document the encounter succinctly. Mystery shopping started in the 1940s to gauge employees’ integrity. Today, businesses use mystery shopping as a market research method to measure the quality of their customer service, aiming to improve the company’s overall performance.
What exactly does a mystery shopper do?
Mystery shopping is an incredible way of researching the consumer market and experiencing either your goods or your competitor’s goods from the lens of a customer. That means a mystery shopper is employed and picked by the company to test the quality of their product or their competitor’s product. What makes them secret shoppers is that they aren’t known to anyone in the establishment. They come into the company as a regular customer, so they can get an appraisal of their customer service quality.
A mystery shopper checks a company’s quality standards and examines its employee’s level of professionalism. This process is part of a market research strategy so they can understand the shortcomings of their businesses and fix them. There are different types of mystery shopping, which can all be done in different ways such as in-person, over the phone, or online. Regardless of how it is approached, the goal remains the same: to gather information on the product and experience the company’s customer service style. Let’s break down these unique styles:
Types of mystery shopping
- In-Person: Companies and restaurants mostly use this style of mystery shopping. They prefer it when the mystery shopper needs to communicate with the staff to gauge how friendly, courteous, helpful, and professional they are. They also use it to rate the product as a first-hand user.
- Telephone: The telephone method is mostly to evaluate customer experience companies. Companies where calls are integral mostly use this to learn how agents respond to calls, assess their helpfulness, and determine if they follow proper etiquette.
- Hybrid: This type is mostly used by mystery shoppers who want the full customer experience. It’s great for a hotel scenario; you call to make a reservation and evaluate how professional they are over the phone, then go in-person to assess their services for the duration of your stay.
The pros and cons of mystery shopping
With the advancements in technology, most customers have shifted to online shopping. For companies and businesses who still have walk-ins, it’s only right to invest in your business’ physical space to understand what’s missing and what could increase your growth, which is where mystery shopping comes in. Let’s explore the pros of mystery shopping:
- It can help you assess your company’s standards. Mystery shopping will help you understand how your staff handle your customers when you’re not there. It also exposes how your business looks from the customer’s perspective, and depicts if you’re living up to their expectations. Leveling up your company’s customer service ensures brand loyalty and smooth-running.
- A mystery shopper gives a detailed and honest review of their encounter with your company. You cannot compare this to a review from a regular customer; it focuses on the entire experience and notes significant details that an average customer might miss or overlook.
- Mystery shoppers can work for other stores as well. If you are wondering what the process of your competitor is and how their customer service is, a mystery shopper takes away the curiosity and gives you their experience with the company. This gives you an insight into how they work so you can improve your business practices. There are so many things to discover about your competitors through mystery shopping, like their products/services, charges, the average wait time for customer service and checkout, their business hours, and plenty more.
Now, for the cons of mystery shopping:
- The data recorded by the mystery shopper is what their employer has listed out for them. That checklist given to them may sometimes not include some important customer data that the business may want to gather. If it’s missing any important data, the business may not have a good grasp of what its service is like.
- Once employees know a mystery shopper might visit, they may worry that someone is paying keen interest to them, which could change how they normally provide service and create a different impression for the mystery shopper.
- Although it should never happen, there’s always the possibility of a bias from the mystery shopper; this could be toward the company itself, the person providing service, or the product. Either way, this bias could change the outcome of the data provided by the mystery shopper, making it obsolete.
What qualities should a successful mystery shopper possess?
Mystery shoppers are evaluators for businesses and need to have some specific qualities in order to do it right. Evaluating companies involves skillfully and intelligently rating a business and its operations. In its simplest description, you might mistakenly think anyone could be a secret shopper, but being a successful mystery shopper requires certain qualities that not everyone possesses. Some of these qualities include:
- Excellent communication skills
- A positive attitude
- An energetic, confident and friendly manner
- An active person who can stand and walk for a long time
- A smart, neat appearance
- Excellent writing skills
- Curiosity
- An eye for detail
- Reliability
- Discreteness
- Articulate
- Resourceful
- Unbiased
- Follows direction
- Independent
As expected, a mystery shopper should have an eye for detail and be curious about the product. They must read the product description, the ingredients list, the manuals, etc. of whatever product the company is hoping to gain feedback on. There are several checklists for secret shoppers to follow, but shoppers that ask questions tend to get more in-depth, useful information.
You would need to review these checklists for its specifics and tailor it more to the company or product you’re studying, and then comprehensively jot down your findings. Also, you should need to notice things like if the attendant or employee was friendly and helpful or if the counter was dirty or disorganized. You must know how to communicate your findings and also have a great memory, since you’re going in as a “regular customer”, you can’t be walking around with a pen and pad.
As a shopper, in this regard, you also need to mentally note the important things and then communicate to your superiors when done. If a secret shopper is biased, they forfeit the whole essence of the process. Being unbiased makes your experience as accurate and reliable as possible. Anyone possessing these qualities will do well in the mystery shopping industry.
What industries need mystery shoppers?
Some companies have never considered using mystery shopping to research the consumer market, presuming that mystery shoppers are only suitable for retail and not fit for their industry. However, mystery shoppers can work in a wide range of industries, such as:
- The hospitality industry: So many people in the hospitality industry do not know they can also use a mystery shopper for their benefit. Suppose you own a restaurant, small diner, cafe, or coffee shop. You can employ the services of a mystery shopper to evaluate your business or your competitors’ business. They can help you ensure you provide stellar service at all times, and that your product (being the food/beverages in this case) is up-to-par and stands out compared to other establishments.
- The entertainment industry: The entertainment industry needs outstanding customer experience to keep relevant. This is why secret shoppers are necessary in this field; from bowling alleys to museums to theaters, a mystery shopper providing constructive feedback is key to improving overall service.
- The healthcare industry: Although less popular, private hospitals could employ experienced mystery shopping companies to experience their hospital as a patient to evaluate how empathetic their nurses are and to dictate how professional and fast their service is. This is to improve future patient satisfaction.
- The transport industry: So many companies in the transport industry are looking for ways to deliver phenomenal services to their customers. Companies like airports or car manufacturers also need the customer’s opinion of their products, so a mystery shopper’s feedback is highly useful.
Best practices for implementing mystery shopping
To implement a successful mystery shopping program, it’s crucial to adopt a strategic approach that ensures you gain meaningful insights and drive improvements in your customer experience. Here are five best practices to help you achieve this:
- Select the right mystery shoppers: Ensure you choose individuals who closely match your typical customer profile. This alignment guarantees that the feedback you receive is relevant and accurately reflects the experiences of your actual customers. Carefully selected shoppers can provide insights that are both authentic and actionable.
- Provide comprehensive training: Equip your mystery shoppers with the necessary training and clear instructions to evaluate specific aspects of the customer journey effectively. This preparation ensures they understand your expectations and can provide detailed, accurate assessments. Well-trained shoppers contribute to the reliability and validity of your program’s findings.
- Define clear objectives: Set specific goals for your mystery shopping program to focus evaluations on the aspects of the customer experience you wish to improve. Clear objectives help guide the entire process, ensuring that every evaluation is align with your business priorities. This focus allows you to measure success against targeted outcomes.
- Ensure data accuracy and reliability: Regularly audit the mystery shopping process to verify the authenticity of shopper reports and cross-check findings with other data sources. This practice helps maintain the integrity of the data you collect, ensuring that your insights are trustworthy. Accurate data is essential for making informed business decisions.
- Analyze and act on insights: Utilize analytical tools to identify patterns and trends in the data collected from mystery shopping visits. Develop action plans based on these insights to address any identified issues and leverage areas of strength. By turning insights into action, you can continuously enhance your customer experience and operational performance.
Integrating mystery shopping with digital tools
Integrating mystery shopping with digital tools can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your evaluation processes. By utilizing digital forms for data collection, you can streamline the gathering of insights from mystery shopping visits. Tools like Lumiform allow mystery shoppers to easily record their observations in real-time, ensuring accuracy and reducing the likelihood of data loss. You can customize these digital forms to capture specific metrics, providing a structured and consistent approach to data collection across different evaluations.
Moreover, automating workflow and reporting through digital platforms can further optimize your mystery shopping program. Lumiform automates the assignment of mystery shopping tasks, ensuring you conduct each evaluation according to your predefined schedule. This automation saves time and ensures you complete all necessary evaluations without oversight.
Additionally, automated reporting features enable you to quickly compile and analyze the data collected, transforming raw insights into actionable reports. These reports can highlight trends, pinpoint areas for improvement, and track the effectiveness of any changes implemented. By integrating these digital tools, you can enhance the agility and responsiveness of your mystery shopping initiatives, ultimately leading to better customer experiences and more informed business decisions.
Gain access to a better mystery shopper experience
The world is going digital and to get a better mystery shopping experience, you can integrate with digital solutions and transform the way you evaluate and enhance customer experiences. By selecting the right mystery shoppers, defining clear objectives, ensuring data accuracy, and leveraging digital tools like Lumiform, you can gain valuable insights that drive continuous improvement and operational excellence. These strategies not only help identify areas for enhancement but also reinforce your strengths, ultimately leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
As you embark on or refine your mystery shopping journey, consider how Lumiform can support your efforts with its robust digital forms and automation capabilities. To learn more about how Lumiform can help you optimize your mystery shopping program, streamline processes, and achieve your business goals, You can sign up for a 14-day free trial or ask for a personalized consultation to start improving your customer experience today.