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Taking the
mystery out of mystery shopping
By: Mark Michelson
Over the past few years it seems
everybody has become consumed with mystery shopping.
Companies, consumers and service providers are more involved
with it today than ever before.
Mystery shopping is
known by many names: secret shopping, performance
evaluations, service monitoring, anonymous customers,
quality auditing, service investigations, trained consumers,
service checks and frontline evaluations, to name a few.
No matter what it's
called, mystery shopping is an evaluation of the
shopping/buying process provided by trained shoppers who
know in advance what they are to evaluate. Mystery shoppers
visit or call businesses posing as ordinary customers and
provide detailed evaluations of their experience using
written reports or questionnaires.
Mystery shopping
provides companies with a means of monitoring service from
the consumers' perspective. It lets management be the
proverbial fly on the wall. Mystery shopping is used in a
wide variety of industries such as retail, manufacturing,
hospitality (hotels, restaurants, resorts), property
management, multi-family housing, banking/financial, gas
station and convenience store, entertainment, travel,
utilities, business-to-business, even medical.
Mystery shopping is
not new. It got its start over 50 years ago as a way to
check on employee integrity and minimize theft primarily in
the financial services industry. For several decades now,
companies have been using mystery shopping to evaluate
employee service and sales performance, monitor pricing and
product quality, keep an eye on the competition and ensure
compliance with industry and government regulations. Today
many progressive companies integrate mystery shopping with
employee training/incentive programs and customer
satisfaction measurement.
So why the sudden interest in mystery shopping? It may be
attributed to any of the following: a decline in the quality
of customer service; the growth of chain stores; competitive
pressures; and the fact that more companies are promoting
mystery shopping services. Perhaps it seems more popular now
because companies are getting positive, tangible and
actionable results with their programs.
For companies in competitive industries where product
pricing and assortment are no longer unique selling
propositions, customer service is often the key to success
or failure. Consider the following well known marketing
mantras:
-- Why customers
leave
69 percent cite poor service
13 percent product dissatisfaction
9 percent competitive reasons
5 percent other
3 percent move away
1 percent die
-- It costs five
(seven, 10, etc.) times more to find a new customer than to
keep an existing one.
-- One unhappy
customer will tell 10 other people of their bad experience
with service. These people may then tell 10 others, and so
on.
-- What gets
measured, gets done.
The benefits of a
mystery shopping program are numerous. A well designed
program can help train and motivate front-line employees. It
effectively communicates to employees what is most important
in serving customers. It can be used to measure customer
satisfaction along with other methods. It's an important
competitive tool in monitoring pricing, promotions and
product quality. It can be used to identify potential
problems before they develop into major problems.
Big Brother is
watching
Mystery shopping is
used most often to evaluate an individual's performance.
When evaluating an individual, it is critical that the
evaluation is objective and factual. To ensure this, several
states even require mystery shoppers to have licenses. While
companies should use mystery shopping to improve employee
service or sales skills, and not as a device to spy on them
to catch them doing something wrong, it is nonetheless
reflective of the employee's ability to do their job.
To take Big Brother
out of the picture, it has become more popular to use
mystery shopping as a vehicle for presenting awards - either
on the spot or as part of an overall bonus program. The net
effect of awards-based mystery shopping is that it has
become much more important to employees and managers, which
is a good thing.
Employees need to be
involved in order for a mystery shopping program to be
successful. With bonuses and awards at stake, employees and
managers may dispute the reports more frequently and often
get involved with playing "spot the shopper." This also has
a positive side effect in that employees begin treating
everyone as the potential mystery shopper. The strangest
argument against a poor report is "I knew that was the
shopper!" If this were the case, then why didn't the
employee go out of their way to make sure the experience was
positive?
Who are the mystery
shoppers?
Almost anyone can
be a mystery shopper. Mystery shoppers are regular people,
typically working part-time as either independent
contractors or employees, who are trained to conduct
performance evaluations. For consumers, mystery shopping is
an intriguing concept that allows them to play an important
role in improving customer service while earning some
part-time income and benefits.
Shoppers are
recruited through classified advertising or referrals.
Recently it has become more difficult to recruit qualified,
reliable shoppers, thanks to numerous scam operations (see
p. 18). Due to these scams many applicants today are seeking
unrealistic opportunities to get rich quick or get free
big-ticket merchandise such as TVs. Most good shoppers are
genuinely seeking to play a role in improving customer
service rather than an income opportunity.
Most shopping
companies will have candidates complete an application, at
no cost, and match shoppers with assignments based on the
clients' typical customer profile. For instance, when
shopping apartments, there are luxury apartments as well as
low-income housing. How believable would it be to send a
low-income shopper to a luxury apartment? Also there may be
special requirements for the shop, for example, when
evaluating optical stores a shopper must wear glasses to
complete a transaction.
The training mystery
shoppers receive depends on the client's objectives and the
company that hires them. In most cases, shoppers are trained
over the phone and through written instructions. Shoppers
may be trained in person or required to perform test shops
to evaluate their skills before doing an actual assignment.
Differs from other
research
Mystery shopping is
somewhat different compared with other marketing research
methods. It requires more involvement with the training and
operations departments than the marketing or advertising
departments of clients. It is more labor intensive. It is
both qualitative and quantitative. It's research by
observation.
Shopping programs
require a tremendous effort in recruiting, qualifying,
scheduling, training and managing shoppers. In addition,
individual shopper reports must be distributed, collected,
reviewed, tabulated and summarized in a short time frame.
Shopping reports are used by all levels of a client company,
and distributing the summary reports in a timely manner is
critical.
Who provides mystery
shopping services?
Many different
types of companies provide mystery shopping services,
including marketing research firms, training companies,
private investigators, security providers, merchandisers,
temporary agencies, insurance agencies and companies that
specialize only in mystery shopping. There are well over 500
established companies in the U.S. that provide mystery
shopping services. Most are regional or local, though there
are many that conduct shopping on a national or
international basis.
When choosing a
mystery shopping service provider, look for a firm that:
assists in
developing a custom report based on specific client
objectives and employee training guidelines;
has a large pool of shoppers
to meet the client's needs;
can qualify and train shoppers
to perform specific evaluations;
can provide fast turnaround on
evaluations and summary reports;
has experience with or
knowledge of the client's industry (many shopping
companies specialize in particular industries);
has a good reputation with
their clients and shoppers;
does not charge a fee for
shoppers to apply;
guarantees the quality of
their service and shows a willingness to provide a
re-shop or credit for any suspect shops.
How much does mystery shopping
cost?
Costs for mystery shopping can
vary considerably. The cost depends on the complexity of the
shop, difficulty in recruiting, incentives for shoppers
(such as free meals), frequency and quantity of shops,
length of reports and reporting distribution requirements.
The costs generally range anywhere from $25 to $125, with an
average fee of around $65 per shop.
There are some basic
expenses involved with mystery shopping including
recruiting, printing, long distance, postage/freight, field
labor, management, data entry and analysis. Some companies
charge additional fees to set up a program or provide
summary reports. However, most companies seem willing to
absorb these costs with an ongoing, frequent program. Any
required purchase expenses also must be calculated into the
overall cost of a program. To allow for flexibility when
purchases are required, shoppers should be given an option
to either return the merchandise (which could be used as
another point of evaluation), or keep the merchandise at a
minimal or reduced cost (such as 50 percent on clothing). Of
course meals cannot be returned and are typically considered
as part of a shoppers' benefits.
What makes a
shopping program effective?
Below are key
aspects to an effective shopping program:
The program must be based on
clearly defined objectives with emphasis on existing
training, desired behaviors and standards compliance.
Communicate the program widely
among all employees. Let them know what is expected in
their evaluation and what would qualify for a possible
award. Share results with employees in a positive
manner.
Questionnaires, or evaluation
forms, must be designed to provide objective,
observational feedback with a system to allow for checks
and balances. A mixture of open- and closed-ended
questions with space for shoppers to suggest
improvements is advised. Questionnaires should specify
the behavior to be measured. Do not ask "Was the
employee friendly, smiling, courteous and professional?"
as the employee may be courteous, but not friendly and
smiling. Break questions such as these into three
different questions.
Some questions may be more
important than others. If using a scoring system, which
is recommended, appropriate weighting of questions is
critical. Some questions may not need to have points
allocated to them at all, but may be necessary for the
overall framing of the evaluation.
Questionnaires should be easy
for shoppers to complete and should include specific
illustrations where necessary to clarify the point of
evaluation.
Category summaries make
reporting easier to analyze and digest. A summary page
with all category scores and location, shopper and date
information is very helpful. Category scores are based
on an accumulation of points from individual questions
within each category. Categories may include areas such
as telephone, physical appearance, product quality,
greeting, understanding needs, suggestive selling,
closing and follow-up.
Recruit, qualify and train
shoppers that closely match the clients' typical
customer profile. Shoppers must be able to provide
clear, complete and accurate evaluations.
Provide shoppers with specific
scenarios and clear written instructions. To ensure all
shoppers are providing evaluations on the same issues,
instruct all shoppers to ask for the same, or similar
products and ask the same kinds of questions. At a
minimum shoppers should be given training over the phone
and through easy to follow written instructions. In
addition, try to schedule all shops to be completed
during equal periods, i.e., weekends or weekday evenings
only.
Run quality control checks on
completed evaluation reports before distribution to the
client. Every report must be checked for validity,
accuracy, consistency and objectivity. Shoppers may need
to be contacted to confirm their evaluation reports.
Reporting on a timely basis. A
shopping report has a short shelf life. The individual
store reports must be tabulated and distributed to the
stores within 30 days of the shop - or much sooner if
possible. Summary reports for each district, region,
division, department, etc., must be easy to read and
understand and also distributed in a timely manner.
A shopping program should not
be used as a one-time audit. An established, ongoing
program, where employees know that any customer could be
the mystery shopper, is more effective and objective
than single shot audits.
The future of
mystery shopping
With the new
technologies, mystery shopping is changing. The need for
faster turnaround on shopping reports has resulted in
service providers seeking more efficient ways to distribute
and collect reports. Today many service providers have
shoppers complete their evaluation forms on the Internet, by
E-mail, through fax-on-demand or by telephone.
With the burgeoning
competition among service providers, the call to form an
industry association has grown louder. An association would
need to incorporate the various kinds of mystery shopping
providers, set standards for dealing with clients and
shoppers, act as a unified voice to counter damaging mystery
shopping scams and voice industry concerns regarding use of
independent contractors, licensing regulations and
government control.
More companies are
discovering mystery shopping and developing new ways to use
mystery shopping programs to improve their business. Several
new uses include problem shopping, where the shopper
presents a problem that the employee must solve; using
shoppers as coaches, where after the shop is completed, the
shopper then consults with the store manager on their
observations and suggested improvements; and having
employees showcased, i.e., when the shopper presents an
award, it is an event celebrated throughout the store. No
doubt, there will continue to be more growth and innovation
of mystery shopping programs.
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