(By Judi Hess – President, Customer Perspectives)

If you’re a bank that has used the services of a mystery shopper company such as Customer Perspectives, you’ll get more value from your investment if you share the resulting data across departments and encourage those departments to use and act on that data.

Here are five ways to use the data across departments:

1) Measure training

Conduct a benchmark study and then follow up with a round of mystery shops to determine if your training program was successful. Most clients then conduct monthly mystery shops to make sure they are staying on track, or at least conduct a follow-up study each year.

2) Coach on a one-to-one level

Use the individual shop reports for one-on-one coaching sessions with employees who have been shopped. The more often you do this, the better.

3) Offer positive reinforcement

Positively reinforce good and excellent skills, even more than pointing out areas that need improvement.

4) Redirect training efforts

Continuously identify areas of relative weakness to guide your training focus.

5) Develop a system of incentives

Incentives that are either based on mystery shop scores alone or in combination with other measurement tools will provide additional positive reinforcement.

If mystery shopping results are used in all five ways, you’ll get five times the value at the same cost as using the results in only one way!