Why Your Secret Shop Program is not working

| Saturday, October 15, 2011
By Xavier Rault


If you already have a mystery shopping program in place then you are really trying to improve your business. The question however is how you will truly know if your mystery shopping program is actually effective. Are you really maximizing the potential of this program? Is it improving your business in any way?

Finding out whether or not your mystery shopping program works is pretty easy so long as you pay attention for the following five signs


1. Employees and Managers Regularly Dispute Findings

Disputes are natural between employees and managers when it comes to mystery shopper reports, and there may be an issues that led to a bad experience n the customer side. If you find that these disputes are common, then it would be a good idea to look over your program to find out where the problem actually lies.

The issue could be with your employees, so examine the program and how it is being carried out. You should also ensure that your measurement criteria is really giving you an accurate readout of the results.


2. Your Scores Do not Add Up

If your mystery shopper program involves an all-inclusive customer service assessment then you are probably measuring customer service through several other means. One may be a customer service survey that gives your customers the chance to voice their opinion of the staff along with other aspects of your business.

Looking at your customer service data, make sure there is not too much of a distinction between what the data says and what your customers are saying. Looking at both will be very important to the future of your business!

For example, if your customer service data shows extreme satisfaction with the ways in which employees performance, but your mystery shopping data says otherwise, it would be smart to reassess the qualifications of the mystery shoppers and/or review the ways criterion are being assessed by the shoppers. Both sets of data should largely reflect and support the findings of the other.


3. Your Desk Is Flooded with Additional Work from Your Provider

Effective mystery shopping programs should increase your productivity are not slow it down. If you have pages of unexplained data and an increase in work volume and paperwork, your program clearly is not meeting your needs.

Assuming that your provider is doing their job, you should never have stacks of incomprehensible data. You should have detailed analysis that helps you to create a strategic and profitable plan.


4. Your ROI Is Unclear

How exactly is your mystery shopping program affecting your sales and profits? Do you know? Do you really know how to make use of the data that your provider is giving you? Most importantly, are you seeing any kind of return on your investment?

If the answers to the questions are anything but obvious, then you have a problem. The data analysis should always provide you with high end reports and assessments along with useable feedback. In other words, all of your questions should be answered the first time.


5. You're Unsure how to Improve your Profits

A poorly planned and implemented mystery shopping program will not teach you any more about your business than what you already know or what you could discover for yourself.
On the other hand, the benefits of a well-planned, expertly implemented, and professionally analyzed mystery shopping program cannot compare with the casual stroll down an aisle.

Your final analysis should tell you just how your business is doing, and it should even tell you how to improve it. There will be many facts about your business that you never knew, all of which can be learned with a proper mystery shopper program.

In business, there is nothing greater than a well tuned and well designed mystery shopping program boosting your bottom line.




About the Author:



0 comments:

Post a Comment