Take note, retail workers: Sometimes the customer might be something more
What mystery shoppers pay attention to when visiting a retailer:
Do employees greet and thank customers?
Do employees introduce themselves
Do employees inform customers about specials or sales?
Do employees cross-sell products?
Are employees dressed appropriately?
Are the tables, floors and restrooms clean?
How long does it take to get served?
Karen Jenkins may have looked as if she were interested in buying CDs when she walked into Scooter’s music store in Wilmington a couple of months ago, but she had other motives.
She was there undercover to evaluate customer service at the store. Did the store’s employees greet her? Were they willing to help her find specific CDs? Was the person behind the counter courteous? Did the staff look and act professionally?
Jenkins is a mystery-shopping consultant. She owns one of the few locally based mystery-shopping companies in the state. Hired by companies that want to determine the quality of their customer service, mystery shoppers pose as customers and report back on their experiences.
“We are not in there to zing people,” Jenkins said. “It’s to look at the areas of improvement and opportunity.”
Thirty years ago, there were few companies that used mystery shoppers to assess their customer service. Today, corporations as diverse as Boscov’s , McDonald’s and WSFS
Banks use mystery shopping to help evaluate their employees’ interactions with customers.
“Mystery shopping is really more focused on the customer experience,” said Jeff Hall, president of Dallas-based Mystery Shopping Professionals Association. “It can provide very detailed experience to the company regarding each of their stores, having to do with what the customer sees and hears.”
More businesses are seeing a link between customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and the bottom line.
The importance of having satisfied customers has helped propel mystery shopping into an estimated $1.5 billion industry that employs 1.5 million shoppers in the United States and 250,000 in other countries, according to the mystery shopping association.
“We use them to really check up on our service delivery,” said Joan Sullivan, spokeswoman for WSFS Bank, which has an exclusive regional agreement with its mystery shopping company.
Even as more businesses use mystery shoppers, industry experts say customer service across all industries is deteriorating. They contend that not all companies use mystery shopping correctly, and those that do cannot expect it to be the cure-all for their customers’ woes.
“Mystery shopping is a very important piece of the puzzle,” said Peggy Morrow, author of “Customer Service: How to Do It Right!” “You need customer feedback, but you also need several forms of it.
One piece of puzzle
But even with trained mystery shoppers, many companies have not been able to overcome customer dissatisfaction.
John Goodman, president of TARP, a customer care research firm in Arlington, Va., said companies must be willing to take the comprehensive approach to resolving their customer service problems.
“You need a combination of consumer surveys, complaint handling systems and mystery shopping,” Goodman said. “All three of those need to be put together to get the voice of the customer.”
He said only a third of companies use such a comprehensive approach. The remaining two-thirds aren’t willing to pay for the other elements.
In addition to using the best tools to improve their customer service, Goodman said companies should review their policies.
No matter how nice the customer service representative is, if the policy is bad, the customer is going to be dissatisfied. For example, if a company has a policy of no returns under any circumstance, customers won’t be happy.
A TARP study found that 20 percent of customer dissatisfaction is caused by employee actions, while 40 percent is due to corporate products and processes that have an unpleasant surprise for the customer. Customer mistakes or incorrect expectations account for another 40 percent of customer dissatisfaction.
By: Luladey B. Tadesse
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