Do you want to retain your customers or do you want to stay ahead of your competitors in terms of customer retention? Yes, you do, because customer retention is the key to business success. Mystery shopping is the required research tool that helps you in retaining your customers. By means of mystery shopping, you actually figure out and inspect the operations of your retail brand and determine whether it serves your expectations or not. As ultimately your expectation is to better serve your customers and develop a long-term relationship with them. There are numerous benefits of mystery shopping but we at Ace Research have summed up them to 10 core benefits. Let’s dig it out.
You can increase Efficiency
By measuring and monitoring the service performance you will distinguish whether standards are met or not. Mystery shopping will provide you the overall picture of the region, store and even individual employee. Thus, once you have all the reports, you can utilize them for increased efficiency.
You get the feedback from customer’s perspective
Areas such as experience, satisfaction, and brand perception can be assessed by mystery shopping. You get feedback from customer’s point of view that is reliable, specific and quality oriented.
You get feedback about staff performance
This tells you how your employees actually behave when the bosses are not around. Are they attentive to the needs of the customer? How do they handle customer complaints? Do they act professional or do they possess product knowledge? Do they acknowledge the presence of the customer in store by smiling and greeting?
You can monitor facilities condition as perceived by the customer
The overall ambiance i.e. Is the facility clean and tidy? Are the layouts set up as instructed? Do they have promotional vouchers and brochures all the time? Mystery shopping will provide you all the answers sought against the needs and issues faced by the retail industry.
You are actually testing the functionality of internal procedures and SOPs
Often the business put in place the standard procedures to be followed from top to bottom. Again mystery shopping would run a test to determine the effectiveness of such operational procedure that either did they work in the interest of the business or not.
You can use it as a motivational tool for your employees
By rewarding and giving incentive to those who score well in customer relationship. This way you encourage customer care and satisfaction.
You can aware employees about what is important in serving customers
The mystery shopper who actually carries out the mystery shopping is trained to ask specific questions as well as identify the behavior, gesture and look for certain things like products and facility overall. Later in the post mystery shopping meetings, the areas can be highlighted to employees for improvement and they will be aware of the fact that how the customer wants to be served.
You can benchmark competitors
With the strong competition prevailing in the retail industry you should be aware of the fact that, what actual norm is prevailing in the market that promotes customer satisfaction. By knowing how your competitor performs or what is their attitude toward their customer and how their store and overall facility layout has been developed and designed to facilitate customers will help you improve your services as well.
You can identify the need for training
With mystery shopping, you actually develop the understanding of areas of improvement and ultimately the requirement as for how these areas can be developed to reap maximum benefit or improve efficiency. Staff training on the basis of your findings can be conducted for capacity building to improve long-term ties with customers.
You can improve customer retention
With the insight gained from mystery shopping, every improvement you make in your business will lead to better customer satisfaction and ultimately this will lead the customer to choose your company against the competition every time.
With the help of mystery shopping, you can devise your business’s next move forward.