Mystery shopping: A Valuable Link between Measuring & Providing a Good Customer Service

Mere expectation about the kind of experience your consumers are going to come across is at best an uneducated guess which would invariably result in irrecoverable ramifications. Measuring and inspecting the level of quality that you deliver to your customers is decisive in determining whether you would succeed or fail. Albeit there is a plethora of techniques which major market research companies offer, anonymous, objective, third-party assessments of customer experience would provide the information that aids in the materialisation of your expectation towards the ideal customer experiences

Observation and monitoring play an important role in ethnographic research methods whereby consumer experiences in situations where they are buying are tested. Mystery shopping is a method used whereby trained observers pose as consumers and shop at a competitor-owned store or at a company to gather data about customer-employee interaction and other marketing variables Viz. displays layout, prices, and product placement. While the above is more an active data collection, another means adhered to is passive data collection which involves respondent-generated content. Thus, they are referred to as auto-ethnography or self-ethnography. In view of the above, mystery shopping companies in India are increasingly offering such services.

Also besides understanding the high points and low –points in customer experiences, the flipside to this would be understanding whether the staff of a franchisee are abreast with all the nitty gritty to handle all sorts of consumer queries and whether they are skilled salespeople. Also, there’s a need for monitoring an organisation’s distribution chain. In other words, suppliers should be well aware of the products that sell, the manner in which they are displayed and the nature of promotional plans that the intermediaries have so their needs can be expeditiously responded to. Hence, mystery shopping companies in India also offer audit services to examine whether Viz. vendors have provided the right material for a brand showroom so that the showroom is in line with the brand’s reputation.

Major market research companies which offer mystery shopping services for, let’s say, auditing a car dealer’s showroom of a reputed brand. The observations made would be generally based on the following:

1. The first thing which the customer would do when they enter the showroom?
2. Are they paying a visit with the objective to look at one of the cars on display?
3. Would they be inclined to seek help from the staff?
4. Is help offered by the sales personnel in an appropriate manner?
5. Are the sales personnel successful in answering the consumer queries thereafter moving the sales forward?

Hence, mystery shopping companies in India compliments the major market research companies because:

a. Customers with unfavourable experiences may not always complain they simply don’t revisit or return

b. Instead of evangelising about the brand, they may dissuade other customers from purchasing the brand products and /or availing of services

c. Thus mystery shopping aids in discerning whether the actual experience of the customers is as intended

d. Ultimately aiding in the re-examination of the learning and development process, whereby the training areas that need improvement would be identified along with the ones which are working

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