Organisations and businesses are beginning to value their customers not just for their immediate transaction value but also over much longer periods – even the customer’s lifetime - and this approach starts with the current transaction; because it is recognised everywhere that it is far cheaper to retain an existing customer than to create a new one. It is at the customer interface that Mystery Shopping helps in very practical ways. Mystery Shopping is about measuring the performance of sales and service staff and management, often site by site, against agreed Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).

In other words, are staff and management doing and saying what they have been trained to do and say? If you know the answer to this question and have systems in place to monitor it regularly, resolve issues, and create improvements – you are in control and can expect improvement.

Mystery shopping is most often used to measure the performance of sales and service processes to find ways of improving; and it is this improvement in sales and service that will create the return on investment demanded by the user. It is also often integrated with internal measures, customer opinion research, audits and other data gathering and analysis systems.

However, mystery shopping is also used for a whole variety of other key purposes, some of which include monitoring performance in meeting objectives like:

• Competitor Benchmarking – What are your competitors doing that you need to learn from and what is the detail of their service, current offer, etc?
• Compliance – Ensuring that staff and management are operating in compliance with the legal requirements of your industry?
• Standards – Ensuring that all staff are following company laid-down standards and procedures
• Training Needs – Identifying weaknesses in customer service, sales, compliance, etc doing the required training, and then checking that it is working.
• Security – Ensuring that staff are being honest about using the till, giving receipts etc.
• Incentives – Identifying staff members and groups who deserve a reward
• Measuring – The performance of franchise operators against the agreed operating procedures and standards
• Observing and measuring call centre performance
• Monitoring the performance and responsiveness of remote offices

It is also vital for agencies that they work closely with their clients to ensure that their mystery shopping programs are:

• Communicated and understood throughout both organisations with buy-in at all levels
• Reported efficiently and positively at all levels
• Positive and well thought of throughout the organisation

And also that:

• They understand how to create a mystery shopping program
• They understand clients’s needs in their selling and marketing
• They have good technical systems which allow them to communicate with shoppers, accept and process data quickly and efficiently, and report effectively at all levels in the client’s organisation
• They create viable partnerships with their clients
• They expedite problem resolution vigorously