When a business is emerging and/or you have one or a couple of facilities where you operate, with good organization and a clear division of labor, you can very easily keep all processes under control yourself and know what is happening on the ground at all times.
However, when the business develops or large systems are involved, delegation of work is necessary so that you can have enough information and manage and manage your business processes in the best way.
How can you quickly find out what’s going on? By going to the scene. You go directly to your pump, your shop, your car dealership and check that everything is as prescribed by the operating procedures. When it comes to large systems, you will agree that for one man it would be a serious job that would require good logistics and a lot of time invested. On the other hand, if your employees know you, they will behave differently and you will get a distorted picture.
A well-placed mystery shopping project can provide timely information directly from customers who normally shop with you, and the benefit is multiple:
- Find out what’s happening on the field;
- Find out what problems the customer himself is facing;
- Find out how satisfied your customer is with your service and shopping;
- Find out in which segments you need to make corrections, trainings or give additional guidelines;
- You learn what is good and what needs to be nurtured;
- You learn how to be even better;
- You receive all this information continuously for months so that the probability of making a decision error is reduced to a minimum;
- And finally, perhaps the most important thing: you will find out how the superior-management behaves towards the seller, because most likely the seller will behave the same way towards the customer.
Why is mystery shopping not music to everyone’s ears? Because most often with mystery shopping projects, you will very clearly see not the mistakes of the sellers themselves, but mistakes in management. Such a decision requires courage, rationality and patience.
By continuously implementing the mystery shopping method, which has been correctly set up from the very beginning, you can very precisely spot all the omissions and, therefore, take actions that will eliminate those omissions and improve the quality of work, the services provided and the satisfaction of the end customer. After action, with mystery shopping , we can clearly determine the level of success of those actions, and this method can easily become music to your ears.
The mystery shopping method has negative connotations because it often happens that the results of this method are used for punishing employees, calculations within the system, poorly set up with wrong expectations and goals or simply imposed by a “major force” so it is a foreign body in itself. This is precisely what goes against all ethical codes and principles of implementing this method.
Nevertheless, the mystery shopping method should be seen as a great ally and helper in making strategic decisions. Why? Because the results of this method can be used for:
- Creation of employee motivation system (happy employees = happy customers);
- Creating an adequate training system;
- Creating a marketing strategy;
- Improvement of daily operations;
- Improving the quality of service;
- Improving customer satisfaction…
Mystery shopping is not music to everyone’s ears, but it can become very easy, and we know how.