Mystery Shopping Services Australia
December 5, 2024

A Consistent Mystery Shopping Program is Key

Consistency is key to a successful mystery shopping program. We’re sure you will have noticed how good you feel after a workout. Sure your muscles ache a little, but you have put them to the test and feel strong. A week later and the ache may be gone, but so is the feeling of accomplishment and the good work is lost. So it is with Mystery Shopping: if you test your customer service muscle regularly, you won’t lose it. Here’s why it’s important to keep your Mystery Shopping program on a consistent monthly schedule. 

It’s not a pop quiz: 

Intermittent Mystery Shopping programs can inadvertently convey the wrong message to your team. Instead of viewing evaluations as a sporadic test designed to catch them out, a consistent and deliberate series of assessments over time can effectively communicate your commitment to ongoing improvement, reinforcing a positive customer-centric culture. This consistent and supportive approach will inspire your team to deliver exceptional experiences to every customer. 

Perfect reports are just as important: 

Sometimes clients may consider stopping their Mystery Shopping program because their team has done so well in previous cycles, they think there is no point to continuing it. However, it’s not just about identifying problem points, it’s also about recognising excellence. People like to be recognised and rewarded for doing well and the most successful Mystery Shopping programs inspire excitement, rather than complacency.  

The Above Benchmark team would love to be flies on the wall when Team Members receive their 100% reports. We’re thrilled for them to get the results and that’s why we send them certificates of achievement. We think the looks on their faces, and the way they carry themselves after that feedback, justifies a consistent program. 

Detailed comments tell the story: 

Effective Mystery Shopping programs extend beyond simple scoring metrics. They feature mandatory comment sections that allow mystery shoppers to elaborate on their selected responses. This crucial component often reveals nuanced insights that quantitative data alone may not capture. For instance, it could uncover scenarios where team members executed tasks correctly based on the survey questions selected by the client, yet their approach came across as abrupt or awkward. Additionally, shoppers might highlight cases where signs were not sufficiently clear, impacting the overall customer experience. Such detailed feedback equips businesses with immediate and actionable insights, enabling them to address specific customer concerns and continuously improve their standards.

Be the first to know about a potential problem, not social media: 

To proactively safeguard your business’s reputation and prevent negative feedback from escalating online and social media platforms, your business should implement a consistent Mystery Shopping program. By leveraging a reliable Mystery Shopping program, you can address customer pain points proactively before they gain traction online.

Use it for hiring purposes: 

By integrating a consistent Mystery Shopping program into your hiring process, you can establish clear expectations for your team right from the beginning. This approach not only sets a positive tone for your team, but also emphasises the essential role customer service plays in your business. Through systematic integration you convey to your team that Mystery Shopping is a standard and universally accepted practice. 

Avoid a pattern: 

It’s essential to ensure that the mystery shopping schedule is structured to prevent predictability among your team. When mystery shops occur on a predictable, intermittent basis, team members may recognise the pattern and adapt their behavior accordingly. To counter this, implementing a regular, ongoing mystery shopping program, conducted consistently each month, effectively eliminates the predictability. Your team will just know, at some point over the month a visit will occur. Over time, this routine becomes an ingrained and accepted aspect of your business. 

Keep it fresh: 

It’s essential to maintain consistency while also allowing for evolution. While the core mystery shopping elements can stay constant, consider exploring new areas, introducing fresh questions, or altering the approach. This adaptability not only keeps your assessment process dynamic, but also deepens your understanding of your customers’ experiences. By periodically refining and updating your survey framework, you can optomise your customer service strategies.

Budget should not derail a program:

An effective mystery shopping program is designed to maximise your revenue, and it achieves this most effectively when there is a continuous stream of comparable data. If you frequently pause your mystery shopping program, there will be noticeable gaps in the data when you go to compare. If you’ve had a sale or other promotional activity, the control point may not be available to compare, if you had the program on pause then. You wouldn’t pause your bookkeeping, which tracks your profit and loss, and so you shouldn’t pause your mystery shopping program, which tracks your customer service strategies. 

In cases of budget constraints, it is advisable to sustain the program while strategically evaluating select locations, if assessing all locations is not feasible. This approach ensures the ongoing availability of crucial performance data, enabling the celebration of exemplary service delivery while pinpointing opportunities for enhancement.

Don’t lose a vital communication tool:

Sharing results and insights from your mystery shopping program across platforms, opens up communication opportunities with all stakeholders, even customers. Team chats, newsletters, and social media platforms can all be powerful ways to communicate with your team. By communicating transparently, you demonstrate a commitment to the program and convey the shared goals of improvement and celebration. 

Ultimately you not only want to identify the good and the bad, you want to see sales growth. If you regularly test your business’s customer service muscle with a mystery shopping program you can use it to your best advantage, through every facet of your business. If you would like Above Benchmark’s help to set up a consistent mystery shopping program for your business, please contact us for a no obligation chat. 

 

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