What is mystery shopping?

Mystery shopping is an immensely popular assessment tool used to perform consumer research. It helps in understanding the business of a particular product or service.

Earlier, mystery shopping was done to understand employee efficiency and integrity. But, in recent times, many companies are adopting it to understand their rival companies, gain business insights, understand their customer, and evaluate their staff. It also helps brands identify faulty internal protocols and how to rectify them. Mystery shopping has turned out to be an excellent market research tool to grow and understand a business.

How Mystery Shopping is done?

It is often done through a mystery shopper, who is a person hired by third-party mystery shopping companies. These secret shoppers or auditors are trained to go undercover to pose as customers and assess the brand on various aspects such as customer experience, employee service, how long it takes in the billing line, the variety of products/services, etc. Later, they are given a questionnaire or a survey to record their findings. The information thus extracted helps in analyzing the brand’s marketing strategies.

How does mystery shopping help businesses?

Employee feedback: It helps you determine your staff’s performance, who all adhered to the instructions? What strategies are they using to deal with customers? Whether they are hardworking or irresponsible. This helps in identifying the problems and improving customer experience.

Improving efficiency: Some brands inform their staff about mystery shoppers but do not disclose who that person is. As a result, employees tend to treat every customer nicely and help them with queries. With this, you can determine which employee is loyal and goes beyond expectations and who is slacking.

Assessment of procedures: It aids in gaining helpful insight into the internal procedures and identifying the underlying discrepancies. This way loopholes can be easily curbed and new SOPs can be designed for a seamless customer experience.

Competitor evaluation: For a successful business, it is necessary to always stay vigilant about your competitors’ strategies. New brands can benefit tremendously by mystery shopping in established brands to understand where they are lacking and improve the same in their own products/services.

Customer feedback: It is regular people; hence it helps understand the brand’s service from a customer’s perspective. Their feedback can be beneficial in improving the shopping experience for all customers.

Testing a new product/strategy: Based on the mystery shopper’s response, brands can determine which market strategy is working and which isn’t. This comes in handy while introducing new schemes and offers. Their feedback determines any improvement if needed.

Compliance across all stores: If a brand has multiple stores across various regions; mystery shopping helps determine which store’s staff is adhering to the protocol. This improves brand consistency. Mystery shopping helps to identify inconsistencies and take action.

Helps in customer retention: One might think that in order to increase sales they need new customers. When in fact, they should be focussing on building customer retention. All the little changes made after gaining insight add to raising the standards of the service provided. This in turn would make customers choose your brand over any other competition.

Best Mystery Shopping companies in India:

1. HS Brands Asia

2. Bare International

3. Floor Walk

4. Redquanta

5. Lecapri

6. Helion Research

7. Channel play

8. Albatross Global Solutions

Conclusion

Mystery shopping provides amazing actionable insights for all types of businesses. The response received can help in improving customer relations, acting on compliance strategies, getting feedback on staff integrity, implementing effective business strategies, and customer retention. If used wisely, mystery shopping can dramatically boost your sal

Have you ever walked into a store and been impressed with the prompt service from the staff when they assisted you to get the product of your choice? And you get everything billed without hassle? Or at times when you were treated rudely, your queries were neglected and the billing line made you wait for hours?

That’s what customer experience (CX) is called. In layperson terms, customer experience is a person’s overall interaction with the brand’s product and/or services, encompassing various factors. It helps in building an emotional connection with the brand; in turn, encouraging customer retention and brand loyalty.

Often, most brands focus on getting a newer audience but fail to focus on a key aspect of their revenue generation – brand loyalty. Forming a strong customer base becomes a crucial aspect of customer experience management.

What is Customer Experience Management (CXM)?

CXM is often confused with CRM or Customer Relationship Management. The former is customer-oriented while the latter is sale-oriented. Both help in understanding the market for a brand’s business.

CXM oversees all the processes that take care of any interaction points between a customer and the brand’s product. It focuses on a product right from its purchase to its sale.

In experience management, the customer is the centre of attraction. The key focus lies on how they perceive the brand and how any fallacies in the entire framework can be rectified and avoided in the near future. Hence, management begins even before the customer has interacted with the product and/or service.

Benefits of Customer Experience Management:

Customer retention– employing better strategies that satisfy the customer needs leads to generating a loyal customer base. This not only helps in customer retention but also raises profits. Studies suggest it is more economical to keep a customer than acquire a new one.

Lower marketing costs– a loyal customer becomes the poster child of the brand. They tend to endorse the brand by sharing their positive experience with their peers resulting in a free word-of-mouth promotion. This drives sales and better conversions without spending much on marketing costs.

Helps understand competitor’s mindset– customer feedback is immensely valuable. When sharing their experience, a customer tends to compare it with the contemporary brands that target the same clientele, which makes it easier to understand the areas of improvement in the brand and devise new strategies.

Better management- applying effective strategies avoids any last-minute setbacks and provides a seamless customer experience. This not only benefits the customer but the employees as well. Because, in the end, a good work environment is bound to encourage enthusiasm among the staff.

Improved standards– better management aids in raising the brand’s standards and provides it an edge over its competitors. If a company understands their consumer needs, they generate more revenue at less cost.

How to make it better?

The brand’s primary goal should be to build customer retention. Below are a few strategies to do so:

Ideate a framework: along with the brand’s vision, it is crucial to understand the customer’s vision. What do they expect from the brand? How would they interact with the brand’s services? This helps in increasing customer loyalty.

Tap into customer’s emotions: it is imperative to deep dive into the customer’s psyche. What are their sentiments regarding the brand? How do they feel about the brand’s products/services? Building an emotional connection helps establish a long-term relationship with the customer.

Personalize the brand: personality evokes emotions. It makes the product feel less like a commodity and avoids alienation from the brand.

Reward their loyalty: offering referrals and bonuses help make customers feel special, in turn earning their trust. Interacting with them through various channels makes them feel valued. Loyal customers purchase repeatedly and spend more time with the brand, which encourages higher sales.

Take the feedback seriously: any input, be it positive or negative, inspires the brand to improve its product/services to meet the customer’s expectations and fulfil their needs with changing times.

It is crucial to track your customer needs at each step to drive more sales. Your goal as a brand is to get into every nook and cranny of the customer’s mind and come up with effective strategies to avoid any discrepancies and work on consistent improvement. CXM offers unique insights into increasing sales and strengthening the brand.