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Competitive Intelligence Advantages

When a client calls us looking to do a competitive mystery shopping project, most of the time their focus is on pricing. Once we get into the project however, they tend to learn much more about their competitors than they originally thought.

Sales Prevention

When we launch a mystery shopping project, we develop a survey with specific questions designed to gather ALL types of intelligence not just pricing. Here is a great example:

The question is “Did the representative attempt to “win” your business by asking for your business today?” For this particular program 70% of the time they did not. So our client can take a look at exactly which companies did not ask for the business. Lost opportunity? It certainly is and our client now has a better understanding of their sales process or lack thereof.

Another great sales question is, “Did the representative inquire if you are also calling for quotes from other businesses?” Using the same project as an example, this was rated negatively 100% of the time.

Poor Customer Service

How good is my competitor’s customer service? This is almost as important as getting their marketing materials and pricing. “Did the representative attempt to establish rapport with you (i.e. were they friendly, attempted to make conversation, get to know you) ?”

Along with the quantitative part of the survey, we also leave room for the mystery shopper to leave details about their experience. Here are a few examples:

I didn’t get the impression that she cared about my business or what my needs were.

I received the quote two business days after I placed the call. The prices in the written quote were different than those that I was quoted by telephone whereby I might or might not do business with this company.

The employee didn’t discuss too much due to her busy schedule. The employee said she would email me the quote.

This is an example of a B2B mystery shopping project. You can see just by looking at the data, that not all companies value customer service. Additionally, pricing quotes came in wrong, calls needed to be made to get clarification. Great information for a business!

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Audits- Brand, Legal Compliance, Reveal, Price and Merchandising

Audits are an effective observation tool for evaluating everything from product displays and use of marketing materials, to brand exclusivity, franchise compliance, and even adherence to detailed company standards. During periodic visits, auditors openly evaluate the physical and visual aspects of the site according to your customized checklist.

Brand Audit

Brand audits are designed to protect brand image in the context of the physical sales environment. Auditors record location details (which may include digital photographs and embedded video) to confirm that the sales environment mirrors corporate expectations.

These specialized audits help:

  1. Provide visual confirmation of brand presentation and representation
  2. Document that brand integrity is maintained
  3. Appropriately confirm, realign, or reconsider relationships with sales parters.

Legal Compliance Audit

Legal Compliance audits help ensure employees are observing and enforcing the laws and regulations governing your business. Auditors perform specific scenarios to test employee compliance and may take instantly alert the company of the infractions via the Instant Feedback Results feature so that immediate can taken if necessary.

These specialized audits help

  1. Ensure employees understand the importance of industry regulations and the severity of infractions
  2. Protect your company from the repercussions of negligence
  3. Maintain corporate integrity

What is a Retail Audit?

Industry Today explains it as follows. “Fundamentally, a retail audit evaluates the condition of your retail location using hard data. Vendors, employees or a third-party scrutinise your store or pop-up shop to gather information on what’s selling well and what isn’t.

Often, retailers use profits as their main method of measuring success, but when you carry out frequent store audits, you have a lot of extra analytics that provide a broader picture of what state your business is in. There are a wide range of areas an audit can focus on including, but not limited to, merchandising audits, competitor pricing audits, inventory loss audits etc.

During a retail audit, you’ll uncover insights such as:

  • Damaged products
  • Stock levels (including stock on your shelves and stock out the back)
  • Sales volume
  • An outline on what your competitors are doing
  • Calculations on visual retailing and in-store presentations
  • Position of shelves, quantity of frontings, amount of SKUs available, misplaced/incorrect shelf tags
  • An insight into your pricing scheme
  • Where the products are positioned in store

Bear in mind you’ll also have to select the kind of audit that harmonises with your requirements most.”

Keep in mind that with all of this comes the opportunity to evaluate the customer experience.

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Did the Review Economy Kill Surveys?

With the rise of reviews online and social media, many companies have opted out of sending their clients surveys altogether. The thinking is they don’t need them since they are hearing from their customers on a regular basis online. However, is this a good strategy? Do surveys still play an important role?

Let’s start by taking a closer look at the Review Economy. Let’s face it, we have all relied on online reviews when it comes to making a purchase. I would guess that this increased a lot this past year during COVID, with most of us increasing our online shopping. in fact, we wrote about Apple Ratings and what it may do to the Review Economy down the road in a recent blog post. Apple Ratings is something to watch!

The statistics are in favor of online reviews. Northwestern University conducted a study that concluded 95% of shoppers rely on reviews before making a purchase.

Traveling and looking for a good place to eat nearby? You may very well depend on those online reviews before making your dining decision. They are not going away anytime soon.

Google Reviews

Google reviews can really make an impact on brick and mortar companies. So much so that many owners have tried to offer payment in exchange for a good Google review. Something we highly discourage our clients to do, as it is dishonest and can also come back around at some point if you are not careful. Imagine for a moment a customer does leave you a good review in exchange for monetary compensation. Down the road the same person may have an unfavorable experience at your place of business. Can you imagine if they post in social media about it? Even worse, they may cite the favorable review and the compensation. In today’s culture, anything is possible!

Good Google Reviews can make a positive impact on your business, but you had better make sure you have a process in place to monitor the site as well as others. Nothing speaks louder than an unhappy customer with zero reaction from the company. Even if it is an automatic response ( as many are ), it is still better than nothing. Keeping track of your online reputation is a must.

The Case For Surveys

Online reviews have their place, however they can never be a total replacement for conducting your own internal research. Whether you are using mystery shopping or customer surveys, a business in today’s climate can never have too much customer interaction. The Voice of the Customer is still heard the loudest in the form of surveys.

Time is money and money is time. Keep your surveys short and to the point. A short survey that is viewed as easy to take by a customer will garner some excellent results.

We have a B2B client who measures delivery satisfaction. The customer is asked to complete a 4 question Mobile survey right in the moment of experience. Drivers are incentivized to deliver good surveys. This program has run for about a year now and each month the client receives well over a hundred surveys and it is growing. When you factor in word of mouth about the program internally, and good old-fashioned competition, you can create an actionable program for pennies a day!

Question Alternatives

With today’s surveys one has many more options to make an engaging experience for your customers. Here is a great example. Consider how many people took to Tik Tok over the past year! Why? Because they were stuck indoors and found it to be very entertaining. Short, creative and sometimes educational videos by real people on all kinds of topics. In fact, the demographic of users increased because of word of mouth advertising. What started out being a young person’s social site is now used by parents and even some grandparents.

What if we could bring the same level of enthusiasm to a survey?

  • Allow the respondent to take a photo right within the survey. A restaurant customer may love to show a photo of what their entree looked like when they received it! Or how about someone who was asked to upload a photo on how they used the product once it was taken home? It is a more up close and personal kind of question.
  • Try using some humor when crafting your questions or even try using humor in your answers. For example, if fitting for your survey, use words other than excellent, very good , good, etc.. This depends on your customer demographic of course. According to humorthatworks.com, “A survey is only as good as the responses it receives from the responders”. One way to increase the number of survey responses is to use humor to make your surveys fun.” For an excellent rating you could call it “out of the park fantastic”, for example.
  • Change the wording of traditional questions. Anyone who has taken a survey, knows the “standard” questions most ask. They can become so redundant that the respondent doesn’t even think about the answer. Take the question ““How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?” Boring. Instead try ““Has our service been fantastic enough that you’d happily tell you friends about us?”

So don’t disregard the old survey methodologies quite yet. They just need sprucing up a bit and some creative thinking!

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