Let me guess. You've heard of mystery shopping, but have no idea what it is or how to get started. We'll start with what it is. A mystery shopper is an Independant Contractor who is asked by a mystery shopping company to go to a business posing as a 'regular' customer in order to evaluate that business. A mystery shopper looks at certain criteria set forth by the business being shopped in conjunction with the mystery shopping company (mind the word-conjunction). You might be timing how long it takes a restaurant waiter to get your order, or watching how an employee in your favorite fast-food restaurant rings up an order to determine if they are 'pocketing' company money, or whether some staff of your bank are polite to only sharply dressed customers wearing suits.
Some people in the service industry understand the basic concept of service quality management and the need to maintain a steady and consistent level of quality on their products and services. However most of the time, we find a situation where managers are looking, measuring and evaluating performance and quality indices using a different set of measurement than the customer is using! So we have a unique situation where the manager is speaking Hausa and the customer is speaking Yoruba and both trying to convey a particular message and wondering why the other isn’t quite getting it right! It’s quite frustrating!
Now enters the mystery shopper with a vast array of tools from disguises, hidden cameras, and voice recorders! An individual usually well trained in customer services and with a keen discerning mind as well as eyes that is designed to measure the gaps between your brand promise and the ugly truth! Put in another sense the mystery shopper is trained to see what the manager’s does not, cannot and would not for a broad variety of reasons.
Where do we begin from? Ok let’s begin from the point where the manager does not see; for the plain reason being that most managers cannot evaluate a staff adequately for the simple reason that often times, the mere presence of the manager demands a show of some level of respect and adherence to certain quality indices. However we’ve found out that when they are out of the office or away on leave, the staff usually stops this eye service and revert to their preferred way of doing things.
Moving on let’s evaluate customer service or brand promise from the point of view of what the quality manager cannot see. Often times, the manager becomes embroiled in the way things are done and fails to notice certain otherwise ‘obvious’ gaps between the preferred and the actual service provided by the organisation. It is really like the chain-smoker that cannot seem to smell the stench of cigarettes in his house but the entire guests seems to notice. Often times the manager just gets used to doing things a certain way and becomes reluctant to change, however the customer’s idea of quality is ever evolving and changing and soon what was perfect yesterday becomes obsolete tomorrow!
Finally on the point on what the manager would not see is the fact that we’re all humans and as long as human interactions go; a good manager is bound to have affiliations and develop friendships with selected members of staff who are like him/her. However when it comes to seeing faults in our friends, we’ve been taught by culture and in our upbringing that nobody is perfect and so we overlook certain mistakes or errors and make excuses for the employee ranging from the fact that “it must have been a tough day”, “she must have been distracted by…” or an outright “Oh, just give her a break, she usually gets it right”. However these excuses given by most managers are done out of the dyadic relationships they have with the individual being affected and is largely subjective by nature unless of course the manager is a Mr. Scrooge and has no regards to human feelings or the intricacies of keeping friendships.
Having uncovered most of the reasons why “mystery shopping” or customer evaluation experience as its also known is best carried out by an independent contractor with little affiliations towards employees and with a alternative viewpoint; let’s discuss more on what the mystery shopping company looks out for usually in your organisation.
Mystery shopping companies usually work with the management of an organisation to uncover various aspects of an organization’s operations and ensure they’re keeping in line with the set standards. Hence it is quite common for us to have phone calls requesting us to uncover a rouge real-estate agent involved in cross selling, or staff of a hotel that lobbies customer’s for change, or just to experience the cleanliness or orderliness of a particular branch of a bank or quite often mystery shop competition to find out what they’re doing right or wrong and capitalize on it (more on such next time). The uses of a mystery shopping exercise are as diverse as one organisation is different from another, however it all boils down to one purpose- improvement of the customer experience which in turn rewards by transforming to increased customer loyalty.
For us at Jean-Paul and Associates Consultancy, mystery shopping is just another 'tool in the research box', and is treated with the same respect as any other tried and tested methodology such as customer intercept interviews, poll stations, customer feedback modules and the likes. We believe in its value not only as a technique in its own right, but also as a complement to other customer-based research projects. Why? Because it has so much more than just the simple measurement of performance against standards, and can be a powerful tool for businesses including banks, restaurants, hotels and other service industries at both strategic and individual levels. It delivers hard facts and ugly truths about actual service levels, which can often be compared with competitor service levels, and to a presentation audience that is typically made up of those who can make direct changes. For these reasons, it is uniquely placed to turn research findings into genuine improvements for the customer.
For the forward thinking organisation, it hence becomes imperative to revisit how you have been measuring and evaluating your company’s image and impression. Have you been looking through the eyes of a protective self-conscious owner or through the eyes of your customer?
Ebuka Anichebe is the managing director of Jean-Paul and Associates Consultancy .He’s also an experienced mystery shopper (unknown due to his many disguises and aliases) and has helped organizations improve their customer service and brand impression management through a use of well-thought through tools including but not limited to brand audits, mystery shopping, competitive audits, customer intercept interviews, customer service training and brand management. Call him today on 092904541 at no obligation or salesman pressure to find out how we can help you. Visit www.jeanpaulconsult.org for more information on our services.
