WHY MYSTERY SHOPPING IS WORTH THE INVESTMENT
If you’re in the retail game, your business depends on customers having a great experience, which results in great sales.
The numbers never lie but asking your customers what they thought of their shopping experience is a sure-fire way to really understand what the customer experience is like in store. Where a standard customer usually just wants to visit your store, buy something and leave, a Mystery Shopper is there to give a detailed report into what your holistic customer experience is truly and objectively like.
Surveys at POS and on the bottom of receipts are one way of engaging customers to give you their feedback but when 66% of customers prefer to voluntarily reach out to a retailer instead of completing a survey, 80% don’t end up completing a survey they started and 52% won’t spend more than 3 minutes doing so, these are not always the most effective methods of understanding exactly how your customers feel when they shop with your brand. Plus you often won’t get the context to back up the rating which makes it difficult to know where you can improve.
Our experience running mystery shops across a range of different retailers has shown that the biggest missed opportunity when trying to create a great customer experience is not asking why a customer has decided to visit your store or not initiating conversations with an open-ended question. This is the kind of practical information our retail clients like to know because it’s a simple fix of coaching and encouraging teams to ask questions like “What brings you in store today?” instead of “Can I help you with anything?”
Getting this kind of detailed read of your customer experience and knowing how your teams are conducting sales conversations (right down to the words and phrases they use) allows retailers to do something tangible with the results. Whether that’s coaching for improvement or better yet, recognising your teams for creating amazing customer experiences so that they’re repeated. Either way, you’ll be armed with detailed knowledge that will help you create the customer experience you want to be known for and ultimately strong sales results.
Keen to get Mystery Shops up and running in your stores?
Statistics referenced Forbes