Knowledge

Five Benefits of an Ongoing Customer Service Mystery Shopping Program

by Elaine Buxton

Customer service is about selling: selling the right product to the right customer in the right place at the right time. Many factors will determine customer service and, therefore, many factors have an impact on sales. In today’s challenging economic environment, many companies have fewer customers so they must sell more to the customers they do have.

Customer service is a people issue. Mystery shopping reports help companies manage the people component of customer service. Keeping customers consistently happy with your company so that they continue to do business with you is a difficult challenge. Here are five (5) key benefits of an ongoing customer service mystery shopping program:

1. Shops provide an objective basis for ongoing rewards and coaching in customer service.Ongoing mystery shops allow you to reward high performers while working with lower performers to raise their customer service skills.

2. Measure employee customer service skills over time. Mystery shop reports show you at a glance how an employee performs over a given time frame. You can also compare results among employees of similar experience levels to assess training needs.

3. Identify trends among employee groups. Are employees in some geographic areas or within certain job types more likely to provide excellent service? If so, you can take a look at what factors positively impact those situations and work to recreate that success in other lower performing parts of your business.

4. Address challenges of high turnover or morale. As management and other staff move in and out of your company, constant measurement allows for continuous monitoring of customer service levels, both with new and experienced staff members.

5. Sell more products and services to your customers. Serving customers well requires being fully engaged with them. When employees pay attention to customers by serving them well, they also learn of opportunities to suggestively sell additional products and services.

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Listening to Employee Telephone Calls: How Do Multiple Employees Approach the Same Customer Inquiry?

by Elaine Buxton

Listening to employee phone calls allows you to imagine yourself as the customer and hear firsthand how your employees interact. Many times managers of front line employees would like to listen to employee conversations but don’t always have the capability to do so. Other times, managers have monitoring capabilities but must listen for hours to hear how multiple employees approach the same inquiry.

One way to gain this capability is to consider audio recorded telephone mystery shops, which offer the following potential advantages:

  • Listen and evaluate employee and customer comments in their own voices, for a realistic idea of what your customer’s experience sounds like.
  • Recognize inconsistent telephone approaches among employees in order to move toward more uniform customer service delivery.
  • Identify areas where employees may have missed a sales opportunity.
  • Recognize employees for meeting/exceeding company expectations in customer service via the phone.
  • Pinpoint areas where employees may have used a more effective approach to resolve a customer issue.
  • Train other employees by reviewing a “perfect” phone shop, in order to show them a strong example of excellent phone interaction with a customer.

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Telephone Mystery Shopping Questions

by Elaine Buxton

Many companies that are considering the implementation of a telephone mystery shopping program ask us for sample mystery shopper survey questions.

Of course, firms need to customize questions to match their own specific customer service guidelines. Taking a look at some basic telephone survey questions can be a good starting point for the company to move toward a program that fulfills its unique requirements without having to reinvent the wheel.

Here are some sample telephone shop questions to use as a starting point:

Mystery shopper questions about basic telephone etiquette:
  • Did the employee answer the phone within 2-3 rings?
  • Did the employee thank you for calling?
  • Did the employee answer in a friendly voice?
  • Did the employee supply his/her name and name of the location?
  • If you were placed on hold, were you asked to hold?
  • When the person you were transferred to answered your call, were you thanked for holding?
  • Did the employee confirm your request?
  • Were you provided with information relevant to the product or service you asked about?

When developing your telephone mystery shopping program, consider the following tips to maximize the return on investment of your program:

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IVR Surveys vs Mystery Shops

by Elaine Buxton

Interactive Voice Response Interviewing (IVR) and Mystery Shops are both effective ways to measure customer experience quality. When looking at a choice between the two methods or a combination of both, it’s important to consider three key areas:

1. How is the client experience information gathered?
With IVR, customers call an automated system and answer survey questions about their most recent experience. A big advantage is that the company can listen to actual customer comments. With a mystery shop program, shoppers pose as customers and report on their observations. The company benefits by receiving shop information on the exact employee behaviors that they are interested in gathering data about.

2. How many customer responses are collected?
In an IVR scenario, customers dial into a phone survey at their convenience. With this method, firms frequently offer rewards for survey participation, which translates into higher response rates in comparison to other survey methods. With mystery shop programs, there’s no need to worry about response rates. The company determines the number of shops and the frequency, and receives a pre-determined number of completed shops by a specified date on a regular basis.

3. How do the questioning methods in IVR Surveys and Mystery Shops differ?
Each customer responds to the exact same questions phrased in the same way when using the IVR method. This eliminates subjectivity associated with interview bias. With a mystery shop solution, shoppers conduct the shops using company-specific guidelines. These guidelines instruct the shoppers to look for certain behaviors, notice specific conditions or listen for specific words. The mystery shop provider uses quality assurance measures to ensure that shoppers follow the guidelines.

IVR responses will tell you what customers thought. Mystery shop responses will tell you how the location performed against your standard. Used together, mystery shops and IVR surveys can paint a valuable, detailed picture of customer service delivery.Here’s a quick comparison:

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Why Organizations Use Mystery Shoppers

by Elaine Buxton

When I tell friends that I work for a firm that provides mystery shopping services, I am surprised by the responses. They are intrigued with the idea of mystery shopping and want to become mystery shoppers themselves. Most have experienced positive and negative interactions in buying situations and have wanted to convey feedback on their experiences.

Aside from an interest in mystery shopping on a personal level, the average consumer does not think about why companies choose a mystery shopping service as a way to measure the customer experience. Consider the goals of those companies that use them:

-Deliver excellent customer service consistently. Most companies do not have the ability to monitor employee service behaviors on a day-to -day basis. As managers review mystery shop reports over time, they gain insight on how employees are living up to company service expectations. They can use this ongoing information to ensure that they give their employees the right tools and coaching to provide great service on a regular basis.

-Expect a high level of customer service from every employee. In a company with a well-run mystery shopping program, employees know that managers will commend those employees who perform well when shopped, and work toward improvement with those who don’t make the grade. Mystery shops contain specific behavior expectations for each position type, making them a great way for companies to move all employees to the same level of customer service delivery.

For companies that set goals like these and work hard to meet them, mystery shop programs are well worth exploring.

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