So naturally, you visit one of their stores (who could resist?). You enter and look around expectantly, waiting to be blown away by a cheeky greeting and charming smile. But nothing happens. Staff continue folding stock, doing paperwork, chatting amongst themselves, and generally ignoring you. It’s clear that the images in the advertising are purely smoke and mirrors.
We’ve all had experiences like this, but usually retailers only get feedback on poor (or exceptional) service in an informal way – from family and friends and the odd customer letter.
But some savvy retailers are taking control of the customer experience and avoiding negative word of mouth through implementing mystery shopping programs.
Mystery shopping is the practice of using trained shoppers to anonymously evaluate the customer experience, including customer service, operations, merchandising, store presentation and product quality. With stores spread far and wide across Australia, often mystery shopping is the only way retailers can keep track of what is happening on the shop floor on a regular basis.
The Australian Retailers Association conducts mystery shopping programs for a range of retailers, from single stores to multi site retailers. Explains ARA Senior Consultant Alan Handsaker, “Some retailers mystery shop monthly and some when special promotions are on. Others do it before they start a training program so that they can stick a peg in the ground and say, ‘this is where we are now’. They can then see the benefits of the mystery shopping once the training has been implemented and they see gradual improvements”.
The customer experience While retailers dedicate vast resources to product development, buying, marketing, advertising, promotions and store fit-out, often the crucial staff/ customer interaction is overlooked. Mystery shopping provides retailers with a tool to manage the customer experience to ensure customers feel positive when they walk out of their store.
“Customer experience” – a term coined by Joseph Pine and James Gilmour in their 1999 book The Experience Economy, is much more than just great customer service. It is the sum of all touch points – such as service, setting, product and interaction - that leaves a lasting positive impression with the customer.
“The customer experience shouldn’t be left to chance” says Katie Miles, Director of The Realise Group, an organisation that measures the customer experience through mystery shopping. “It should be completely intentional from the moment a customer walks through your front door and should be consistent throughout every store in your chain.”
A bad, or even a ho-hum customer experience can have a devastating effect on a store. In an IBM study, 50% of consumers said that they avoided certain retailers due to a negative previous experience with their staff.
The state of play
“You could fill books and books with tales of lousy service” says Alan. “And unfortunately the stories you hear are more bad than good.”
Research confirms Alan’s belief. Through over 16,000 mystery shops conducted in 2006:
• Only 68% of retail staff were making customer service their first priority (over housekeeping tasks) • Only 70% approached the mystery customer and offered them assistance • Only 48% suggested an upsell/add-on • Only 55% attempted to close the sale.
There’s plenty of room for improvement, but the first step is knowing what to measure.
What to measure?
A great mystery shopping questionnaire should map a path of how you want the “perfect” customer experience to unfold, which of course, should result in a sale. It should also be mindful of avoiding those things that frustrate customers and lead them away from a sale, such as being “pounced” on by staff, not being approached by staff at all, or stock being difficult to find or not clearly priced.
While a questionnaire sets service “non-negotiables”, it should leave enough flexibility for a genuine interaction that allows staff to respond to customer’s unique needs and lets the personality of your staff shine through.
The questionnaire can also be developed to address the needs of many departments within a retail organisation. Marketing might like to know that the latest promotions and POS are displayed correctly, Training may be interested in whether its latest training program has been implemented and Operations gains value from knowing that staff are following process and procedures.
Foodco, a franchise network that operates Muffin Break and Jamaica Blue, created a new mystery shopping program in 2006. Its training program formed the basis of the questionnaire, but it also benchmarked the customer experience based on its brand values and how the company felt the customer experience should be.
Luckily, mystery shopping gave Foodco the tools to measure whether its staff were living and breathing these brand values. For example, one of Muffin Break’s brand values is “fresh”. Freshness can easily be measured through questions about the freshness of their food, but it is also measured through questions designed to capture a “fresh” attitude in staff, such as a bright and unique greeting and special touches of service.
How to use the data
Mystery shopping data is best used to positively shape behaviour to achieve the objectives set at the start of the program. Business Horizons Journal from Indiana University recommends that mystery shopping is integrated into a continuous service quality loop, “with a continuous linking of standards, staff performance, training and reward mechanisms”.
The ARA frequently uses mystery shopping programs as part of a training program.
“Often retailers will start with a mystery shop, then they’ll get the feedback that highlights training needs and agree that there are advantages to doing some training” explains Alan. “Mystery shopping definitely gets better results when linked to training and development.”
One aspect of retail that consistently scores poorly in mystery shopping is selling skills. Armani Exchange implemented a new mystery shopping program in 2006 and soon found that staff were not executing the selling steps that they had been trained in, especially the key areas of greeting and building a rapport with customers, handling objections, adding-on and closing the sale.
To counter this, Armani have invested in a new training workshop that focuses on teaching staff soft selling techniques that appear to be “styling” rather than “selling”.
Continued mystery shopping will then be used to assess the success of this training program and identify further training needs. Continual communication and rewarding positive behaviour is also key to the success of a mystery shopping program, according to Katie Miles.
“Great results are achieved by linking the mystery shopping program to an incentive and rewards program and by communicating the results throughout all levels of the organisation through newsletters, e-mail and awards nights” says Katie. “Best results are always achieved by the businesses that integrate the mystery shopping standards and the data into their daily operations and management.”
Customer loyalty
The ultimate aim of an exceptional customer experience is of course, generating sales and customer loyalty. And customer loyalty can equate to big bucks. According to US Business Week, 80% of Starbucks revenue comes from customers who visit the stores an average of 18 times a month.
“Customer loyalty is about more than just finding the product you want at the right place” says Katie Miles. “There also needs to be an emotional connection to your brand, or else you are easily replaced by your competitor.”
And that emotional connection comes from human interaction. The ultimate goal of mystery shopping is ensuring that the customer feels good about their interaction in your store and their interaction with your staff. And they tell their friends about it.
