Mystery shoppers help businesses retain customers
Bradenton Herald (Fla.)
By Jerry Osteryoung
"How your customers perceive you affects your bottom line and
managing information from them helps you understand them, communicate
with them, and keep them." - Anne Deschene, CEO of the Better
Business Bureau of Hawaii
It is very hard to gauge your customer service. If you are the
boss and you typically only see great customer service when you
walk through your business, you might need another way to evaluate
customer service.
If you hardly ever receive really serious complaints, but your
customer retention seems to be slipping and you are not sure as
to why, you definitely need another way.
If you own a business in a different geographic area, you need
someone to evaluate your customer service in this remote area.
In these and similar circumstances it is very prudent to consider
mystery shoppers.
A mystery shopper is a person unknown by your staff who comes
into your place of business and evaluates all elements of customer
service, per your specifications. The owner of a restaurant may
ask mystery shoppers to judge the quality of the food and to clock
the delivery time. They may even check the cleanliness of the
restrooms. For a financial service type of business, mystery shoppers
might evaluate the crowds waiting for teller transaction, the
time it takes to get to the teller, and the friendliness of the
teller.
Mystery shopping seems to work best for the retail side of business
but it can be useful to evaluate any type of for-profit-business
or nonprofit agency that experiences the public coming in or calling
in for assistance. If the mystery shoppers you select know nothing
about your business, the results should be fairly unbiased.
There are a ton of mystery shopping firms you can locate online.
Make sure the firm is a member of the Mystery Shoppers Providers
Association because they have an adequate code of ethics. Also,
you must do due diligence and find other firms that have used
the services of the shopping agency you choose to validate the
quality of service before you contract with them.
Many mystery shopping reports results may be viewed almost instantaneously
through the Internet so you can monitor how the program is progressing.
While mystery shopping is a great concept, there are several
problems you can avoid. First, avoid a useless survey by making
sure your expectations are clearly laid out. Just saying that
you "want to evaluate customer service" is not enough. Give specific
things to evaluate. For example, "How many minutes elapsed from
the time you ordered until the food was delivered?"
Another question might be, "How were you first greeted when you
entered the store?"
Like any analysis, the more work you do on the front end, designing
your questionnaire for the mystery shopper, the better.
Another thing to avoid is an agency that employs untrained mystery
shoppers. "Any warm body" is not a mystery shopper. Shoppers should
be trained and certified. You may also want to specify the demographics
of the mystery shopper. For example, a 20-year-old male might
not be the best person to evaluate a maternity shop.
Mystery shopping has been around for more than 60 years and was
previously used only by large corporations. But more and more
small businesses are using this service. Additionally, more and
more businesses are tying pay incentives to the results of these
customer satisfaction surveys.
Mystery shopping is a neat way to measure the effectiveness of
your customer service program. Now go out and see if this service
might be amenable for your business.
Jerry Osteryoung is an FSU Finance Professor and executive director
of the Jim Moran Institute for GlobalEntrepreneurship at Florida
State University's College of Business. He writes a weekly column
dispensing small business advice and has authored eight books,
including "So You Need to Write a Business Plan!" He can be reached
by email at jostery@cob.fsu.edu or by phone at (850) 644-3372.
