Mystery shopping with a question to answer
What does a customer actually experience when they call, visit, or ask for the next step? Mystery shopping helps you examine that interaction against the standards you set, rather than relying only on a general impression.
Design the visit or call around your process
We begin with the experience you want to understand: a first inquiry, a follow-up, a visit, or a handoff. Together we decide what the shopper should ask, what should be observed, and what would make the findings useful to your team.
A mystery shop might look at whether an employee asks the right discovery questions, explains an option accurately, offers a clear next step, or follows up as expected. The details depend on your business and the interaction being tested.
Give managers observations they can use
The result should show what happened and where the experience departed from your standard. That gives managers a starting point for coaching and for checking whether the process itself needs to change. Recordings or photos may be part of a project where permitted and agreed in advance.
Mystery shopping can sit alongside call analysis when you want to compare the experience of an anonymous prospect with the wider pattern in recorded conversations.
Tell us what you want to learn, and we can discuss a suitable phone or in-person shop.
Integrity
- Cash going straight into the tip container
- Overpouring alcohol (filling the jigger and then trailing to 1000+)
- Liquor License compliance
- Failing to immediately issue receipts
Product/Display Checks
- Ensuring staff correctly display in-house marketing materials for promotions and programs
- Testing employee delivery of promotional products
- Monitoring compliance with key brand and company procedures/offerings
- Ensuring important aspects of the product/service are adhered to
Competitor Checks
- Collecting data on competitor promotions and programs
- Comparing how your company’s service compares to competitors
- Evaluating what competitors are doing that your business is not
- Evaluating competitors’ quality of customer service
Sales
- Improving check/sales averages
- Monitoring all transaction points to identify missed sales triggers and exploit best practices
- Enhancing the performance of underperforming stores
- Boosting sales through training and suggestive selling techniques
Growth Management
- Supporting new store expansions and programs
- Surveying prospective acquisitions to assess operational performance
- Ramping up new stores to profitability
- Shorten new stores time to profitability /improve the success ratio
Customer Service
- Assess customer service impressions to determine satisfaction
- Focus in on likelihood of retention, and potential for return, (targeting the “loyal” customer)
- Measuring timeliness of customer service
- Minimizing complaints by catching issues early
Employee Training/Retention
- Identifying problem managers/employees
- Using survey data to fuel employee recognition and reward programs
- Creating healthy competition among districts and locations
- Gaining feedback from employees and managers on procedural effectiveness and areas for improvement
What types of mystery shopping features do you offer?
- Video recording
- Audio recording
- Time and date-stamped photos
- Phone call recordings
- Follow up email, phone call, and text message tracking