Mystery Shopping has long been the gold standard for assessing and building a customer experience strategy in many different types of businesses, from retail to hospitality and even B2B. What you may not have realised is the extent that mystery shopping helps business during the pandemic.
In response to the global pandemic and ongoing lockdowns, some businesses scaled back their expenses and their Mystery Shopping programs. However, while some businesses scaled back, others increased their programs and many businesses implemented mystery shopping for the first time ever.
One thing we learned from the pandemic is that Mystery Shopping has never been more important to securing the future of businesses.
Many companies realised this and we had an influx of enquiries about Mystery Shopping during the first lockdowns. This was largely due to state and regional managers not being able to travel to check stores and restaurants. When our clients couldn’t travel, we had local Mystery Shoppers already in place who could check on things when they couldn’t.
As soon as our government announced new standards to combat the spread of Covid-19, our team made complimentary changes to all of our clients’ Mystery Shopping surveys to reflect the new standards.
By adding Covid-19 related questions to our mystery shopping surveys, we enabled our clients to monitor the rollout and compliance of safety measures across their entire company. We gave our clients comfort that the precautions were being implemented correctly at a store/site level.
Here are some examples of the Covid-19 related questions we added for our clients:
- Was a check-in poster clearly visible?
- Was hand sanitiser available?
- Were the Team Members wearing face masks?
- Were the Team Members social distancing?
- Were there floor markers or signs to guide customers where to stand?
- Were the tables and chairs being wiped down after each customer?
As a nation, we quickly learnt that every industry has different standards to monitor and it wasn’t a case of one size fits all. We allowed our clients to personalise the new Covid questions to suit their business.
While ultimately, Mystery Shopping is about customer service and the experience, it’s still important to include some questions about cleanliness and compliance, especially during a pandemic.
If your Mystery Shopping program hasn’t been updated to include these questions, speak to your provider. If you don’t have a Mystery Shopping program then consider adding some of these questions to your team’s daily procedure checklist.
During the pandemic, we hear the phrase ‘social distancing’ a lot. It’s worth noting that we need to keep our distance physically, but still need to be social with customers. Bigger smiles that light up your eyes behind a face mask and genuine customer service that builds trust and rapport, are just a few things you can do now to better connect with customers.
Covid-19 precautions are most likely here to stay and need to be monitored as a regular part of business. The National Retailer’s Association have a Covid-19 Resource Hub which provides up-to-date information. If you would like to learn more about how mystery shopping helps businesses during the pandemic and to discuss how Above Benchmark can help your business monitor standards and compliance, please contact us for an obligation-free consultation.
