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It was shortly after noon under an overcast Jersey sky when I spotted her in the corner of the bank. It was the hit. Discretely, I pulled up the collar on my trench coat and meandered over to her desk, all the while making sure that I wasn't being tailed. She was juggling more paperwork than a senatorial page on budget day in D.C. This was Lillian, the Customer Service Representative, and I, I was the mystery shopper. It was time to get her to sing.
Stop. Wait. This might be the way Mickey Spillane might attempt to explain what mystery shopping is but I think a more traditional approach would be appropriate here.
What is Mystery Shopping?
Simply defined, mystery shopping is the gathering of information while impersonating a customer or prospect. Usually implemented in a customer service environment, some programs are designed to periodically assess one's own company's sales effectiveness. Others focus on obtaining competitive intelligence.
Why Mystery Shopping?
Mystery shopping is often used as a complement to customer satisfaction research to assess the customer experience with greater reliability and exactness.
While no one would dare argue that customer impressions of service aren't valuable, specific service mechanics such as the adherence to corporate training standards, the presence and strength of cross-selling efforts, and other key measures of sales competency are truly beyond the scope of traditional customer satisfaction surveys.
Trained to focus on key presentation content or sales personnel behavior, a mystery shopper's observations are often more reliable, more specific and, therefore, more actionable than customer feedback could ever hope to be.
It is often said that the number one reason salespeople are not more effective is, ironically, their failure to close the sale. A well-trained mystery shopper can listen for a salesperson's subtle or overt attempts to close the sale, document how they handle objections, or detail the recommendations they may make.
One particularly positive side effect of ongoing mystery shopper programs is that sales representatives must treat every contact as a potential mystery shopper, thereby delivering a higher level of service to all customers in the process.
Implementation
As with any research endeavor, mystery shop implementation begins with defining the objective. A poorly defined shop will only yield disappointing results.
Next, the shop plan is prepared. This includes a determination of how many shops will be conducted, over what period of time, by how many shoppers, and whether the shops will be accomplished by telephone, in-person, or otherwise (i.e. over the Internet).
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