News: Articles of Interest

Reconstructing the image of Mystery Shopping

Few years back, a woman took a job in a superstore retail outlet. Every morning of her job started with a fear of mystery shopping. At every duty, of every customer she was scared. She was always too conscious - and the result was job dissatisfaction. However, this was the time when the idea of mystery shopping was sprouting its leaves. Many years have passed since those days and today mystery shopping is a lot different an issue.

Today, mystery shopping is no longer that scary, anonymous, voodoo like process which was totally phantom and even employees could never know of the outcomes. The programs available these days are much more interactive. The famous author Len Barry even suggested the phrase Virtual Shoppers to be used instead of Mystery Shoppers. According to him- mystery shopping the very word has a negative air about it- which creates a terrifying image among the employees.

Mystery shopping program can be made an effective strategy if coupled with proper explanation of the results and adequate rewards, reinforcements as well as training programs followed by it. However, the ultimate results of mystery shopping can be ripped only if the management: top and middle actively takes part in implementing the programs. A change has to be indoctrinated in the organizational culture- the frontline employees are to be incorporated in the strategic improvement.

• Building support for mystery shopping at management level:

It is crucial to get the support of the management in the mystery shopping program. How to get it? For the best shot you need to have a well-designed plan, a measurement system that is thorough and quantifiable, a recurring procedure, well defied objective and proper activation plan basing on the outcomes of the shopping.

As stated by Al Goldsmith, they portray the mystery shopping procedures to the clients as well as to themselves- as an integral part of the overall improvement procedure which is a factor of simultaneous sessions of measurement and according actions. For example, training sessions are designed and implemented basing on the outcomes of a typical shopping session. After the implementation the shopping agency goes on re-shopping to measure the effects again.

Such cycle of cause and effect should be elaborated to the management beforehand so that they are convinced. However, if the client is new in the field-relevant case studies can be shown to the client in order to make the claims credible. Sometimes rewards and incentives play important roles as well.

• Building support for mystery shopping at frontline employees level:

It is always prescribed to business entities to check on their level of employee satisfaction level if they find their customers consistently dissatisfied. A dissatisfied employee will always loath the job and the customers s/he is supposed to handle. Now there are much serious implications of this scenario. When a customer is handled badly- the company loses not only one customer- but rather a stream of potential as well as present customers. For, a dissatisfied or angry customer will surely tell others about his/her experience and this will affect the goodwill of the company hideously. The simplest real life example of this can be the restaurant scenario-

Suppose a waiter behaves badly with a customer. That customer along with his/her peers is hardly going to visit again. So, this is established that employee satisfaction is to be established in order to achieve maximum customer advocacy.

With today's well designed mystery shopping programs- a retailer has nothing to worry about. Rather these days they look forward to it as they have incentive opportunities associated with it. In pursuit of achieving success in service marketing it is necessary to incorporate the culture of excellent quality assurance in the organizational culture. However, it's very likely to be encountered with resistance within the organization at the verge of introducing a new culture. But it is also necessary that it is done- because in a service organization the contact between the frontline employees and the consumers is obvious and hence the culture of communication plays a vital role in assuring quality service.

• Building long term effect:

Build a team- yield the long term fruits. You can start by sharing the effects, the results, such as: the increase in sales, customer loyalties can be notified to the employees. When you are sharing such info it creates a sense of belongingness among the employees- they feel they are a part of a strong team which is destined to achieve the organizational objective. They find themselves as important players in the big picture.

As a company goes through a cycle of mystery shopping activities like: shopping and then training based on the results then shopping again, the company starts getting some tangible outputs like growth of revenue, bigger customer base etc. However, to make this step real effective it is important to have credible shopping results- and therefore it's important to appoint skilled shoppers.

• To what extent the positive spin is to be promoted?

It has been established so far that there is chances of far better results if mystery shopping can be portrayed positively. Now to what level positivity should be portrayed? Is there any chance that too much positivity will end in negligence of the employees? So far a lot of research works have been done on this but no such results were obtained. It has been found out that the more mystery shopping has been made friendlier the more enthused the employees are to embrace it. The results of a positively imaged mystery shopping have always shown perpetual improvement.

While it's true that, mystery shopping should be made interactive for the employees for better results- however, the best results cannot be ripped until or unless the employees put into action the trainings they have received and venture for better shopping score.

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