Mystery shopping implies that a company or a specialized agency finds people who will visit the required store and collect the necessary information. They are called mystery shoppers, and their work is to pretend that they are real customers. This “mimicry” allows you to get the most objective and unbiased opinion regarding your internal business performance.
Here are five examples that show how your business can benefit from using mystery shopping when making market research.
You Get an Insight into Your Staff Behavior
You likely have spent much time coaching your employees to get them acquainted with SOP for various situations. But how will you know that they actually adhere to your instructions? You are not just waiting for feedback from an irate customer to take measures, are you?
Mystery shopping technique offers you an insight into your staff performance and allows seeing whether they keep up with the brand promise of your company.
It is crucial for efficient business performance to identify whether an issue is caused by the staff or management, or maybe it is an individual initiative.
Mystery shopping research results will show you who among your staff members is delinquent and whose performance goes beyond any expectations. Mystery shoppers can extract the most accurate and objective information and provide you with the experience of a real customer. With this knowledge, you can quickly identify the problem and find an appropriate solution to improve customer service.
You Can Examine Your Competitors
It is vital for the success of your business to constantly check how it is doing compared to your competitors. And one best advantage of mystery shopping is that it allows you to assess your competitors. You can easily observe their daily operations and staff behavior and see how people respond to their brand.
Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors can be used for your advantage. For instance, if you know that your major competitor is always short of a particular item about which people often ask, you can put an extra stock of this in-demand item.
Newcomers in the industry can benefit greatly from “mystery shopping” others already established successful companies. Mystery shopping is also beneficial for those who have been around for quite a while since it allows them to make a competitive advantage.
You Can Inspect Internal Procedures
You may think that you don’t need mystery shopping because you can utilize your employees to get feedback and performance reports. Of course, this is possible, but do you think that it will be objective enough? Employees have biases that decrease their capabilities to notice which areas need improvements. What is more, they know that pointing out elements that require advancements actually means more work on their shoulders. Hence, employees cannot objectively perceive inner processes from the perspective of customers. It is likely that their reports will include only insignificant issues.
With mystery shopping, you get an objective perspective of your customers from a person who is only interested in finding the truth. A mystery shopper can provide you with constructive feedback concerning the internal procedures of your business, as well as research and analyze particular aspects that you specify beforehand.
You Can Evaluate New Products
Have you ever experienced a situation when you have realized an idea that you believed was destined to boost sales in a matter of a few weeks, but months later, the numbers were saying otherwise? Well, there are many reasons why your endeavor could fail. Maybe your staff members do not follow the plan you described. Or maybe the customers’ expectations were not met. There are many many more reasons why everything could go wrong.
The first thing that you should do is to understand what caused the failure and then make conclusions from it. Mystery shopping allows you to easily identify what went wrong by accessing the perspective of your customers, who are your primary critics.
Mystery Shopping Drives Compliance
Any company must ensure that its staff members always adhere to specific protocols. Simply obeying the rules is not nearly as effective as complying with a company’s business procedures. It promotes the consistency of your brand and has a positive effect on the overall public image.
Mystery shopping technique allows monitoring compliance across an organization. While you just can’t have a precise idea of what is happening in each of your stores, a mystery shopper can provide you with this essential information.
Sometimes it may be an inappropriate dress code or inconsistency with communication ethics that can undermine your business values. Mystery shopping helps you to track down these issues and take necessary measures.
Final Thoughts
Mystery shopping is an efficient technique that helps to promote the efficiency of a business, and using proper tools for mystery shopping increases its effectiveness even more.
Checker is a market research and mystery shopping software that offers you everything necessary for your research projects. It is simple, powerful, and integrated, and I bet what you will absolutely love it.
