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Category: Mystery Shopping

How Do You Use LinkedIn?

 

LinkedIn has been a fantastic social media site for professionals – I’ve often referred to it as the “Facebook for business” and the “underdog of social media.” It grew quietly and has become a great resource for networking, lead generation, and recruitment over the last couple of years.

 

The infographic below shows data on how people are using LinkedIn, what benefits they get, and when people use it. Some of the more interesting statistics include:

 

79.6% of LinkedIn users utilize the groups feature most often. I’m not surprised to see this number increase over years past. Before, many users did not take advantage of the LinkedIn Groups, but this is a wonderful feature for people to connect with others, show their expertise, and learn more about their industry.

 

64% of LinkedIn users utilize the “Who’s looked at your profile” feature. We can’t help it – we want to know who’s checking us out. This is a great way to find new connections, potential lead generation, and to see what types of people are drawn to your profile. While this is great for LinkedIn, I think Facebook would come to a screeching halt if they ever implemented this feature. Just food for thought.

 

Interestingly, this infographic does not illustrate that people are using LinkedIn for lead generation and/or employment purposes. If this were to be revisited a year from now, I would guess that these two tasks would make it to the infographic. More and more companies, especially in the B2B segment, are using LinkedIn for lead generation. As a B2B company, we have gained several new contacts through LinkedIn over the last couple of years.

 

Similarly, employers are using many different methods to find and vet potential new employees. While most check out the potential hire’s blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, LinkedIn can be a great resource to learn more about potential candidates.

 

Take a look at the infographic below and let us know what you think. Are there any surprises? How do YOU use LinkedIn, and how often? We’d love to hear from you!

 

 

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How Do You Include Your Employees?

 

Employees want to feel valued in their work, and they often times have great ideas to share. How does your company work to make sure your employees are heard and valued? Is your company’s communication the best that it can be?

 

I heard a great idea that one company does to make sure all employees are “kept in the loop” and their ideas are shared across the board. There is a retail location that keeps an employee log – after each shift, employees are responsible for writing a summary of any issues that came up during their shift, such as register issues, problem customers, issues between employees, etc. They can also share ideas in this log.

 

At the beginning of each shift, there is a quick meeting with the staff to review the day before’s log so issues can be resolved and discussed. Employees are rewarded for great things that happen and any upcoming events or ideas are shared.

 

Employees report that this is a great way to communicate and they feel as though they are a part of the company operations. I can imagine that employee morale is higher than it might be at other companies.

 

What does your company do to make employees feel valued and a part of the team? I’d love to hear your ideas!

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Plant a Shopper, Watch Your Business Grow

 

This was a tag line we’ve used to roll out our Plant a Shopper program, which we started a few years back. This is a great program to use in banks, park districts, fitness centers, and similar industries.

 

At its most basic level, you can “plant” a shopper into your customer base where they remain for a period of time. During this time, they will act as a normal customer and evaluate various touchpoints of your business. At the end of the period of time, they will provide a more thorough, overall summary of their experience.

 

Let’s look at a couple of examples to see how this plays out:

 

* Banking: we would start with a non-customer who will visit a branch to say they’d like information on opening a checking account. This first visit evaluates the experience as a potential customer and how smoothly the account opening process goes. They will keep the account open for a period of time during which they will make transactions both inside the branch and at the drive thru, and perhaps call the customer service line to resolve issues. They may even track if promotional calls or emails are utilized and how this is perceived as a customer. Finally, at the end of their timeframe, they will talk with a Personal Banker and explain that they’d like to close the account to see how it is handled. Does the baker attempt to ‘save’ the account or simply start the closing process?

 

* Park Districts: many park districts would like to evaluate their instructions or guest presenters at various events. However, sending in a shopper once or even twice during a class schedule may not be enough to get a true picture. Shoppers will start by registering for the class or program to see how it is handled, actually take the class, and at the end provide a full summary regarding their experience.

 

* Fitness centers: some facilities have a reputation for providing misleading information when customers join, and others are known for making it all but impossible to cancel your membership. Find out exactly what your company is saying and doing to gain new customers and retain them. Shoppers can go in as a potential customer to get information, then not make a committment at that point, but do so if follow up is done. From there, they can be members for a short period of time, and, like a bank evaluation, go into the facility to say they would like to end their membership to see how it is handled.

 

This is a great program to use when you’d like to see the full lifecycle of a customer. It can give you insight into areas that may need improvement, and may even help tweak your traditional mystery shopping programming, as you could find that what you’re measuring may be fine, but there are areas you haven’t considered in the past that are “falling through the cracks” and need to be addressed.

 

At any rate, mystery shopping has evolved into a flexible method of covertly evaluating businesses through the eyes of a customer. Utilizing a Plant a Shopper evaluation is just another way to view your service levels.

 

 

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