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.

One area of the business world which stands dynamic and most aggressive in terms of advancements and innovation is Marketing, and it’s a no-brainer to realise how heavy companies are investing into marketing and trying to reach customers organically!

The term “Organic” is currently all the rage, from social media followers to companies tempting consumers to try their brands. Companies need customers who will be devoted long-term customers.

In contrast to social media posts and videos, which make it simple to target an audience, there are very few ways to draw customers to a business when we talk about generating some footfalls. One such tactic that will help businesses grow and better understand their clients but is slightly unfamiliar to the Indian market is Mystery shopping!

The whole idea of this blog is to let you know how the Indian market is unaware about the concept of Mystery shopping, yet & why its implementation is crucial for better marketing & establishing competitive benchmarking.

The term Mystery & shopping itself is evident enough to understand what this concept means, it basically involves shopping in disguise, known as Mystery shoppers. These mystery shoppers are hired by an organisation and are asked to experience their services just like normal customers.

Getting paid to shop, to eat, to review their performance? Mystery shopper
Does savour these perks.

But the question still remains relevant, in what ways does mystery shopping help?

1. Helps to improve customer retention-
Understanding how customers feel about your brand and your services, improving on the flaws is what stands as a big advantage to the business. It will help to analyse the activities better and get an overview of the operations.

2.Helps to keep a check on Staff and their activities-
Every business has their set of standard operating procedures and business systems which needs to be followed and with the help of mystery shoppers one can keep a check on the employees and their activities while at work.

Employees who perform well can be rewarded & the ones who are not,suitable action can be taken w.r.t to their negligence.

3. Provides an edge over Competitive Benchmarking-
Hiring Mystery shoppers for your brand? Legends.
Hiring mystery shoppers to keep an eye on your Competitor? Ultra Legends.

Exactly what stands out as the biggest advantage of this technique, sending mystery shoppers to your competitor brands in the industry will help to better understand what makes their brand stand out and how different it is from ours.

It will also help to gain insights about the industry and its trends. Mystery shopping has its own set of perks and this one is our personal favourite for obvious reasons!

4. Understand the scope for improvement
This trick will definitely help to get a detailed understanding of how the business is functioning and help to get a better SWOT analysis of the organisation.

5.Helps generate employment-
Mystery shoppers can be freelancers or an employee of a mystery shopping company too, but what matters is it helps to employ people and creates job opportunities in the market.

6.Helps to improve customer Satisfaction –
The basic aim of the whole mystery shopping process is build better customer relations and create a loyal customer base for the business.

In a world where cut-throat competition exists and businesses are trying to make customers feel special with their services, this technique is most useful for gauging competitors and their business procedures, understanding where our business stands and what strategies can be used to stand out in the market.

Although this idea is slightly unfamiliar in India right now, with the growing number of brands and customer services, implementing mystery shopping as a business strategy will soon become a trend.

So to the entrepreneurs (aspiring entrepreneurs) who want to understand their business better (mysteriously) and become an edge over your competitors, you now know the strategy- and as far as hiring mystery shoppers is concerned, we are here for your rescue!

Market Intelligence VS Business Intelligence 

Now that Business Intelligence tools are flourishing, and their popularity as a dynamic job profile is on the rise, let me explain how these two areas are different and why they matter!

But let me tell you a tool that connects both these teams, a concept slightly unfamiliar to the Indian public – Mystery Shopping!

By the end of the blog, I am sure you will know how mystery shopping aids in business Intelligence and Market Intelligence.

What is Business Intelligence ?

Data is what drives the world today, not just the corporate world, even the smallest of public surveys and choices are used as raw data for research. 

By its very nature, business intelligence is nothing more than an extensive process to assist decision-making and enhance strategy implementation by using data sets in a manner that is designed to analyze where business is today, where it was in the past, and what is required to achieve future goals.

Irrespective of the industry, data analytics and access to instant databases are what matters today. Predicting future trends and formulating strategy accordingly is the goal of Business Intelliegence.

The purpose of Business Intelligence is to study business activities and identify whether the current system and processes are sufficient to reach organizational goals. The focus here is on internal management and activities and what can be done to improve them. The primary data used in business intelligence are sales data, accounts data, and financial statements. The data is compiled to analyze business activities and assist with further research.

Customer Satisfaction and Customer Experience 

Customer Satisfaction (CS) and Customer Experience (CX) go hand-in-hand for a successful business.
They are like two eyes for a human and they are equally important for any company’s growth. Customer
Satisfaction starts when the Customer Experience ends. Mystery Shopping and Customer Satisfaction
surveys are some of the tools used for obtaining accurate data on a company’s operations and its
customers’ actual experiences.

In the Indian market, especially post-pandemic, we can see a dip in Customer Satisfaction for Indian
products. Most Indian businesses rely on foreign brands to gain Customer Satisfaction. They are unable
to get an appropriate Customer Experience from their business alone. Hence, we can see a big
dependency on foreign brands to be successful in the Indian market.

Customer Satisfaction and Customer Experience: How it is Measured & Implemented?

Customer Satisfaction can be measured by conducting surveys through various modes like email, social
media, post-purchase screen, phone calls, or in-app surveys. These surveys mostly denote the exact
perceptions of the customers from the products; or organizations’ point of view. The surveys are to be
kept brief and to the point so that customers don’t need to invest too much time to provide their
feedback. Usually, we see that the negative aspects of the feelings or experiences are pointed out by
customers in such Customer Satisfaction surveys. Hence, we cannot rely fully on these surveys. So, we
also need the help of Mystery Shopping programs to arrive at consolidated data.

How does Mystery Shopping help in Improving CS and CX?

Mystery Shopping, as we know, is a program implemented to get the actual employee behavior and
business standards in specific measurable areas. These programs not only give customers’ perceptions
but also provide an overview of the actual day-to-day functioning of the businesses. By adapting these
programs in various stores at different locations, an organization can get a complete picture of their
business from all aspects which can be used for strategizing their future marketing plans.

Mystery Shopping programs can be immediately implemented for training the employees, making changes in
day-to-day operations, and even getting good knowledge about their competitors in the market.
To be concise, Customer Satisfaction is required to a certain extent to understand the feelings and
expectations of customers which Mystery Shopping programs cannot fully provide. Similarly, Mystery
Shopping programs can provide realistic data to show what exactly the company is doing from the
operations and customers’ side. This data can be used to further improve the areas which need
betterment based on the Customer Satisfaction surveys. So, both Mystery Shopping and Customer
Satisfaction goes hand in hand to provide an accurate Customer Experience.