Close That Sale Retail industry uses 'mystery shoppers' to check
on customer service
The Hamilton Spectator
By Lisa Grace Marr
At the first stop on a "mystery shopping" tour where we're keeping
tabs on customer service, we almost have to beg for attention.
We're in a Burlington store shopping for a digital camera. The
sales person seems to know a lot about digital cameras, but never
asks what we want to use it for. He gives us a spin on Hewlett
Packard cameras and leaves when we fall silent.
"He just committed the cardinal sin of retail sales," said my
companion, Andrij Brygidyr.
"He didn't close the sale." Brygidyr and I are posing as customers
on a mystery shopping exercise.
Brygidyr is a University of Toronto business professor and president
of A&A Merchandising, a merchandising and marketing firm which
uses mystery shoppers as a research techniques.
Mystery shopping is a growing industry where hired "shoppers"
pretending to be customers check out merchandising, customer service,
employee integrity and product quality. It's worth about $20 million
in Canada, according to the Mystery Shopping Providers Association,
and about $500 million in the U.S.
There are mystery shopping companies in Hamilton, and mystery
shoppers in local stores. "If the program is well-designed, a
mystery shopper will measure against the company's expectations,
not against the customer's expectations," said Tracey Conners,
senior vice-president of the mystery shopping division of the
Corporate Research Group (CRG), a national market research firm
based in Nepean.
In other words, whether I'm satisfied as a customer really doesn't
matter. What does matter is whether or not the sales associate
behaves in the way he or she was trained. CRG has 25,000 mystery
shoppers on staff across the country.
Mystery shopping is mostly linked to the retail industry, but
it is also used in travel and tourism, hospitals, government services,
banks and housing. For Canada's $30-billion dollar retail industry,
meeting company objectives, especially around customer service,
is critical to success.
"(Retailers) know customer service is the only differentiator,"
said Brygidyr. "Why would you go to Staples or Office Depot? All
you have is service and price."
Back on the tour, we head to an independent camera store where
we think they might have better service. This time, the salesman
asks us if we want help, but then only pushes Fuji cameras. Even
when Brygidyr asks some leading questions about printers and accessories,
we get only basic information. He clearly knows a lot about cameras
but when we fall silent at the end of our conversation, he doesn't
try to close the sale.
Brygidyr wonders if suppliers have made recent visits to the
two stores we've visited. "Fuji has been there," he said, gesturing
at the independent store. "Either the store got a large shipment
so their profit margins are higher or the sales people are being
offered incentives."
Brygidyr engineers such strategies. Three quarters of A&A's clients
are suppliers or manufacturers of goods such as cameras. They
use a company like A&A to train sales associates about a product,
then A&A hires a mystery shopper to enter the store to see how
the product is being pitched.
"That's where the fight is. It's in the store. Sixty per cent
of purchase decisions are made at the point of sale," he said.
At the last store, the store manager asks great questions about
why we want a digital camera and then launches into an overview
of what's available and what would suit us. The closest he comes
to closing the deal is to mention the store's return policy.
"You can try it and see if you like it," he said.
By the end of the day, no one has tried to close a sale, and
that's a no-no.
