A customer's best friend
Indianapolis Star
By Dana Knight
MCL Cafeteria wants to know if its mashed potatoes are fluffy
enough.
Mike's Express Carwash wonders if cars get dry enough
after a wash.
Beazer Homes needs to know if employees treat potential buyers
ethically and kindly.
How can they learn those answers?
Well, it can be a mystery. Customers often don't offer constructive,
honest feedback on their own. And managers get skewed results
if they try to go in and evaluate. Employees generally are on
their best behavior when a higher- up is around.
Enter the secret, literally, to many Indiana companies' success:
Service Connections, an Indianapolis-based mystery shopping company
that sends consultants secretly into businesses to check on everything
from a store's cleanliness to the length of waits for service
to how well the dry cleaning was done.
"Management can't be everywhere at once," said Janet Fitzgerald
Sipe, president of the company and a retired executive with Ameritech/SBC,
now AT&T. "We can be where they need us to be and give them honest
feedback."
That feedback comes in the form of detailed reports filled out
by mystery shoppers, many including narratives of what took place.
Shoppers are trained on how to write a report and encouraged to
relay every little detail.
For their work, consultants are reimbursed for the expense of
the visit and given a minimum of $10 for their time. Some visits,
or "shops," can be more lucrative -- worth $75 or $100 per visit.
Service Connections, celebrating 10 years in business, has recorded
steady and marked growth. Sipe, who finds herself in the middle
of a hot industry, recalls how her company grew from a one-person
operation to a 14-employee business.
"When I began this, I just started calling on friends and family
to do the shops," she said. They started telling their friends
and family, and today Sipe has 2,300 consultants in her database,
with about 500 of them active. At any given time, she has 20 clients,
and she has done work nationally.
Revenue also has grown steadily, and while she declined to reveal
specific numbers, Sipe said it has doubled since 2002.
That growth can be found industrywide. Mystery shopping is a
$600 million business, recording 11.1 percent growth annually,
according to the Mystery Shopping Providers Association.
"Almost everyone involved in the mystery shopping industry has
experienced tremendous growth in recent years," said John Swinburn,
executive director of the association. "It is critical for companies
to take every step necessary to ensure great customer service."
Competitive edge
As major corporations and big-box stores have pushed out small
independent companies that thrived on customer service, the big
guys are realizing they now must battle among themselves to give
the best service. Most secret shopping is done at retail, financial,
fast-food and convenience stores.
But many other industries are joining in. Perception Strategies
in Indianapolis, for example, sends mystery shoppers into doctor's
offices and hospitals to see how things go. It does shops in 25
states.
Companies spend as little as a few thousand dollars a year to
millions of dollars for the larger companies just to check up
on employees. Why? Repeat business, the crucial element to any
service business's success.
"It gives us a customer's perspective of what we do," said Jesse
Feil, chief operating officer with MCL Cafeteria.
"We're all so good at looking at our business from our viewpoint,
to hear it from a customer standpoint is just invaluable."
MCL has used Service Connections since 2000, and each of its
20 restaurants gets shopped at least once a month. The results
have revealed comments on everything from service in the dining
area to pricing of menu items to how to label food. The company
doesn't take the feedback lightly.
Each month, MCL takes the report to the management teams at the
stores, who then review them with all the employees. Evaluations
are never used as a means to fire or get rid of bad employees,
but as a training tool.
At Mike's Express, the evaluations go a step further with every
visit being secretly recorded by audio. Management can hear exactly
what the employee says, what the customer says and know if interactions
are going according to training protocol.
Local companies laud Service Connections because it is a local
company. Sipe or one of her project managers goes in at the start
of each relationship to customize a shopping plan to the client's
needs.
"If they ask for a 48-year-old African-American female with two
kids to shop at 2 p.m. on a Sunday, we give them that," said Carol
Anatrella, general manager with the company.
The details are many for Mike's Express. With 34 Mike's locations
in Indiana and Ohio, Service Connections makes 100 shops per month,
three at each location.
"They grade us on everything from first impression when they
pull up to the property to interaction with the greeter," said
Joe Rice, director of human resources with Mike's. "They even
grade us on the cleanliness and placement of our stuffed animals."
Mike's is known for its stuffed animals sitting throughout the
carwash, and it wants to know if a bear gets faded or a dog's
ear is torn. It's a little detail, but it's about the quality
of the experience, Rice said.
"In terms of repeat business, it is everything to us," he said.
"This is very much a loyalty- based business, and we want to keep
customers coming back."
A local rarity
Many mystery-shopping companies exist nationally, but locally
there are few. A search for another local mystery shopping company
found none, though the nature of the business makes them tough
to track down.
Even Sipe's company is run out of the basement of a Downtown
building. Shoppers remain anonymous, and details of shops are
kept secret.
One thing isn't a mystery, Sipe said. All employees of companies
signed up with Service Connections are told a mystery shopper
could stop in on any given day.
"I don't believe in any other way," Sipe said.
"I think it's only fair they know they may be watched or recorded.
But the mystery of when is still there."
