Mystery shopping is a decades-old market research technique that can provide your business with great insight into the quality of its customer service and shopping experience for the average consumer. This service is an excellent way to gain an unbiased perspective on your business operations so you can make improvements and changes as necessary.
According to the job search site JobMonkey, businesses that use mystery shopping experience an average growth of more than 10%!
Here’s more about the benefits of mystery shopping and how to contact our team at Katava Marketing if you need help improving your web design for a better consumer experience.
What Is Mystery Shopping?
Mystery shopping, also known as secret shopping, is when a third-party, unbiased “shopper” is hired to visit your consumer-facing business and evaluate the quality of its customer service. Mystery shoppers can also do other tasks that help you evaluate certain aspects of your business.
Mystery shopping can be conducted in person, over the phone, or online.
In-Person Mystery Shopping
An in-person mystery shopper walks around your store to make various observations, such as its cleanliness and product displays, and interactions between employees and other customers. Most mystery shoppers will purchase one or two products and evaluate how the transaction is handled and how the employee interacts with them during checkout. Mystery shoppers are intended to blend in with other shoppers and be anonymous and can often escape the notice of your most seasoned employees.
Telephone Mystery Shopping
Telephone mystery shoppers evaluate how well your customer service or support agents handle calls. For instance, they may observe how quickly and accurately your staff can resolve issues and answer questions. They may also assess how well your call center employees can be heard or understood, such as through good enunciation, and how friendly and empathetic they can be when resolving problems.
Online Mystery Shopping
Online mystery shoppers often evaluate the overall consumer experience when shopping on your website. They may browse your site to assess its quality, to check whether there is adequate information about your products and services, and to determine whether the checkout process is easy and seamless. They may also check to see whether your website has accurate contact information listed and whether any features or links are broken.
Shortly after evaluating your business, the mystery shopper will fill out a questionnaire or write a report about their experience. This report will then be provided to your upper management so it can be reviewed, and so your business can make changes as needed to improve its customer service experience.
What Are the Benefits of Mystery Shopping?
Mystery shopping has been a common business practice for decades and can be extremely useful if you want to improve your online reputation or evaluate the performance of your staff when management is absent. Mystery shopping can also be used to evaluate the customer service experience given by your competitors.
Here are other potential benefits of hiring a mystery shopper:
- Improve customer service. Gain feedback on what went well and what didn’t in terms of customer service, and train employees as needed.
- Identify new issues or problems. Learn about potential problems you may not be aware of, which may be hurting your reputation or bottom line.
- Get answers to specific questions. Provide mystery shoppers with specific tasks to gain honest, unbiased answers to any questions you may have. For example, you can task the mystery shopper with finding a specific product to learn how easy it was for them to locate it in your store.
- Learn strengths and weaknesses. Identify where you need to invest more time in your business to make certain aspects better.
- Evaluate a new marketing strategy you implemented. Gain feedback from your mystery shopper on any new sales or marketing tactics your business is trying.
- Assess existing employee training programs. Use feedback from mystery shoppers about your employees’ customer service skills to revamp and improve your existing training programs.
What Can Businesses Learn from Mystery Shopping?
Mystery shopping can help you better understand your customers and their needs—giving your business the opportunity to provide the best possible consumer experience. In addition to the many benefits of mystery shopping listed above, you can use feedback from mystery shoppers to finely tune your business and boost brand awareness, increase revenue, and gain an edge over the competition.
If one of your goals is to improve your online reputation, mystery shopping can provide your business with the insight it needs to garner a higher number of positive online reviews. According to analytics software provider PowerReviews, about 57% of shoppers read reviews while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores to evaluate products they’re considering buying. Additionally, 96% of consumers look specifically for negative reviews, which is a major bump from the 85% who did the same in 2018.
Regardless of your business goals and what you hope to achieve, mystery shopping is an invaluable service that can help you improve your business.
At Katava Marketing, your vision is our mission! Our full-service marketing agency can evaluate your website and work with you to improve your site design, search engine optimization (SEO), digital marketing strategy, and more. Contact us today at 973-998-8008 to get started!
