Previously we examined best practices in mystery shop program launch.

Plan for Change

Finally, given mystery shopping measures employee behaviors against service standards, it is a best practice in mystery shopping to calibrate and align service standards with customer expectations. This is achieved by maintaining a feedback loop from customer expectations uncovered with surveys of customers back into updating both service standards based on these customer expectations and mystery shopping to measure and reinforce those standards.  Such an informed feedback loop between customer surveys and mystery shopping will ensure the behaviors measured are aligned with customer expectations.

Even well-designed and administered best practices in mystery shopping research requires periodic adjustment. Performance scores eventually flatten out or cluster together, diminishing the value of the program as a tool for rewarding top performers and continuously improving quality. Periodic reviews should be worked into the program design so it can be kept relevant and useful, and so the bar can be repeatedly raised on service quality and employee performance.

Provider Selection

Truth be told…mystery shop data collection is largely a commodity, all mystery shop providers have access to the same pool of shoppers, and use similar technology to collect shop data.  The source of differentiation is the extent to which a provider can help take meaningful action on the results.

Hire a provider that can be a partner. Large companies often employ an excruciating bidding process that rarely identifies the best vendor for their needs. They issue lengthy RFPs for mystery shopping that are meant to weed out the weakest contenders, but by asking bidders to commit to overly detailed and inappropriate specifications, they effectively eliminate more sophisticated companies at the same time. The typical RFP process creates an environment in which mystery shopping vendors over-promise in order to make the first cut, thus setting themselves up for failure if they win the account. In addition, it treats mystery shopping research as a commodity, regarding it as a bulk purchase of data rather than a high-value quality improvement tool. Companies have more success when they research the market carefully and identify the providers that have the knowledge and commitment to help them build a truly valuable program.

Conclusion

It is the employees who animate the brand, and it is imperative that employee sales and service behaviors be aligned with the brand promise.  Actions speak louder than words.  Brands spend millions of dollars on external messaging to define an emotional connection with the customer.  However, when a customer perceives a disconnect between an employee representing the brand and external messaging, they almost certainly will experience brand ambiguity.  The result severely undermines these investments, not only for the customer in question, but their entire social network.  In today’s increasingly connected world, one bad experience could be shared hundreds if not thousands of times over.  Mystery shopping is an excellent tool to align sales and service behaviors to the brand.

Mystery shopping programs, when administered in accordance with certain mystery shopping best practices, identify the sales and service behaviors that matter most – those which drive purchase intent and customer loyalty.