What is Mystery Shopping?

Mystery Shopping is the evaluation, measurement and reporting of customer service standards by use of agents acting as if they were customers. It is arguably the fastest and most effective method of obtaining hard objective management data about customer service levels.

There are several types of Mystery Shop. The most common is where agents visit a client’s retail premises to make an evaluation. Another type is where agents report on a client’s telephone response in a variety of situations such as a call from a prospective customer or to a telephone compliant. A third type is where a home service is being offered (e.g. carpet and upholstery cleaning) where the client’s staff visit the agent’s home to provide the service.

For example:

• Does the retailer recommend our product to a customer?
• Is our product displayed prominently, or as we specify to our representatives?
• Do our home visiting salesman research the prospective customer’s needs launching into a sales pitch or a particular model?
• Do our franchisees offer to do the job cheaper for cash?
• How do our retail outlets compare with that of our main competitor?
• What do they do well that we could copy?
• How many of our products are on display in a retail outlet and at what price?
• Are our installation contractors meeting our agreed service standards, or are they letting us down?
• Which of our branches offers the best customer service and what is the worst?
• How did last quarter’s service measures compare with this quarter?
• Are we meeting our customer service targets? If not where is the shortfall?
• How quickly are our telephone sales lines answered? How often are they engaged?

Mystery Shoppers can carry out an audit of your customer service operation. ‘Mystery Shopping’ involves regular sampling of your service, with a report of each survey as well as periodic summaries of what we have found.

We have a large number of agents spread over Great Britain who are able to sample customer service. We have quality procedures in place to ensure that we in turn provide you with the best possible service.

We carry out sampling visits to your retail outlets, we will sample your telephone response services and we can sample services which are provided at the homes of our agents.

If your typical customer has a very unusual profile, or the service you provide is extremely expensive, we can arrange to recruit your own prospective or existing customers to carry out our surveys.

Research shows that it is the quality of human interaction which has the greatest effect on customers’ perception of a company. Therefore where there is little difference between competing products or services, quality customer service can give the competitive edge.