No Surprises in Mystery Shopping – The Importance of Proper Program Launch

There should be no surprises in mystery shopping. When investments in mystery shopping fail to achieve their potential, it is often because those who are accountable for the results, the front-line employees and their direct managers, were not properly introduced to the program.

Improper positioning and introduction of the program risks creating internal resistance. Front-line personnel may interpret mystery shopping as something akin to Orwell’s Big Brother – interpreting it as a distrustful management checking up on their employees. They may see the mystery shop program solely as a means of realizing financial rewards, rather than more intrinsic rewards such as being better at their profession, and as a result game the system by frivolously disputing shops. This internal resistance often manifests itself in the form of excessive disputes, questioning everything, wasting hours of time reviewing security films, and playing a game of indentifying the shopper – almost always phantom shoppers (actual customers who are not mystery shopping them). All this internal resistance creates an unnecessary distraction from realizing the brand’s customer experience goals.

Key to launching a successful mystery shopping program is communication, positive communication of: behavioral expectations of employees, guidance regarding internal program administration, and instruction on how to use the results to improve performance. There should be no surprises in mystery shopping, surprises create resistance and kills buy-in.

Position mystery shopping as a win-win.  Position it that mystery shopping is designed to help the employee by making them better at their jobs.  Employees want to succeed.  They want to be good at their jobs.  Leverage this desire to succeed in obtaining buy-in from the frontline.

It is, therefore, critical to ensure employees throughout the organization are fully informed and have bought into the program before it is launched. Pre-launch communication should include:

• definition of the brand
• description of the employees’ role as ambassadors of the brand
• list specific behaviors expected of employees (including a copy of the mystery shop questionnaire)
• answering procedural questions of how to communicate program related issues
• training employees how to read mystery shopping reports
• Finally, how to use the information effectively, including and how to set goals for improvement.

Proper launching of a mystery shop program is critical to its success.  Starting on the right foot positions mystery shopping in the minds of customer-facing personnel as a positive tool to help them become better at their jobs – and offers real benefits to them both in terms of rewards as a result of the shop, but also intrinsically as it reinforces sales and service behaviors that will benefit them throughout their career.

Communication is key – again, there should be no surprises in a mystery shop program.

In a subsequent post we will discuss communication of expectations.