Inside the Customer Experience

 

Here’s a fun way, where possible, to celebrate employee milestones. Of course, this won’t work for every business model, but it’s something to think about and tweak to fit your needs, as it’s a fun, simple way to call out employees while evoking a positive environment for your customers.

 
I was recently shopping at a major grocery chain when I heard an announcement, “Attention shoppers. We’d like to bring to your attention someone very special to our team. John Smith is celebrating his 5th anniversary with us. If you stop by the meat department, please wish him a Happy Anniversary. Thanks for all you do John!”

 

It made me smile and I thought it was a great way to acknowledge this gentleman.

 

Then, over the next several minutes, there were a few more announcements, this time by employees. Some simply wished him a Happy Anniversary over the PA system, while others also said how they enjoyed working with him, he’s a great person, and other short, similar sentiments.

 

It was not disruptive in any way, and it gave me a positive feeling during my shopping experience. As I continued shopping, I watched for other customer reactions, and all were the same – some smiled during the announcements, and I overheard one couple talking about heading back to the meat department to wish him a Happy Anniversary because it’d be “fun to do.”

 

Such a simple thing, but an effective way of building employee morale and customer satisfaction, all in one.

 

 

 

More and more, companies will incorporate the Net Promoter Score at the end of their mystery shopping report. This is a valuable gauge of customer satisfaction, and I can see why companies use it on their reports. However, I do think at times there are misperceptions about the rating and what it all means.

 

Mystery shoppers are evaluating your business from an operational, objective standpoint. Companies provide key performance indicators and shoppers base their report on this criteria.

 

Enter Net Promoter Score- this is typically one of the last questions on the mystery shopping report, and companies ask shoppers to rate their experience from 0-10 and if they would recommend the location to others. This question is more customer-oriented and subjective than the others, and can appear misleading.

 

Consider this example: on a simple retail shop, the mystery shopper reports that the employee didn’t wear a name tag, didn’t suggest the store’s credit card during the transaction, and didn’t attempt to upsell to a more expensive item. Because it is such a simple report, not doing these three tasks lowers the score fairly significantly. However, the shopper gave a NPS of 9 or 10 because the employee was knowledgeable, assistance was quick, and the shopper felt like a valued customer.

 

In this case,the company could wonder how the mystery shopper provided a report with a low performance percentage, yet the NPS was pretty high. Was the shopper not paying attention? Were they being “too nice” in their scoring?

 

Nope. They are responding to this question from the eyes of a customer. While your company expects staff to do X,Y, and Z, it may very well be that the lack of doing these things does not have an adverse impact on a customer’s perception of your business, plain and simple.

 

Because a high NPS can inflate a performance percentage on a mystery shopping report, it is advised to not “score” this question and keep it as informational only when companies opt to have this question as part of the report. This way they are getting a true perception of the operational performance of staff while also getting the additional data from a more subjective point of view.

 

Companies want to make the most of their programming, and incorporating NPS is one additional way to gauge customer satisfaction. However, it needs to be used properly and the appropriate mindset  needs to be front and center when incorporating this into a mystery shopping program.

 

 

 

When people think of mystery shopping, they tend to first think of traditional, onsite shops. Using shopping services for other areas of a business can be just as effective and streamline call center processes.

 

Telephone mystery shopping is an effective tool that can eliminate the need for additional supervisory staff to continually monitor calls for quality assurance. Similar to an onsite experience, shoppers can call customer service facilities posing as customers to evaluate services. Online mystery shopping can also gauge the entire process of finding items on a company’s website, utilizing the online chat and/or toll-free number to ask questions about an item, purchase, or service, making the purchase, and then making a return. These tactics are successfully used in many companies, and it’s a great way to see all aspects of the customer’s experience from an objective perspective.

 

Because mystery shoppers come from all areas of the world and many walks of life, programs can also evaluate “real life customer” experiences. They can pose as a true customer by making a purchase, or many times they are already a customer.

 

What can be done about more specific types of business where purchases may be geared more toward another business or specialty service? With the client’s help, fictitious accounts can be created in the system so that customer service representatives see a file for the customer when the shopper calls. These transactions can be targeted in the system on the client’s end so that upper management knows they are not actual transactions and are part of the program. This has been successful in many companies to gauge service levels.

 

Next time you’re considering implementation of a mystery shopping program, consider using one for ALL aspects of your business – onsite, telephone, live chat, and email. This is the best way to ensure all customers are getting strong service no matter which avenue they do business with you.