Confero Blog

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 , 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 mystery 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 mystery 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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Confero, Inc. Names Business Development Manager

by Confero Inc.

CARY, N.C. —Elaine Buxton, president of Confero, Inc., (www.conferoinc.com), a national customer experience measurement firm, has announced that Janet Morrison has been named business development manager. Morrison joins Confero with more than 20 years of marketing and sales experience, and 18 years of experience in the financial services industry. Her background includes leading client service and sales initiatives, business development, sales management, marketing research and focus group moderation. Most recently, Morrison served as the regional sales and marketing officer with BB&T, and was responsible for communicating mystery shop goals and results, providing guidance to managers on how to access mystery shop results, encouraging improvement and recognizing employees for superior mystery shop behaviors.

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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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Confero, Inc. Named To Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Privately-Held Companies in America

by Confero Inc.

CARY, N.C.—Elaine Buxton, president of Confero, Inc., (www.conferoinc.com), has announced that the national customer experience measurement firm has been recognized by Inc. magazine as one of America’s fastest-growing private companies.

The 2009 Inc. 5000 is a list of the nation’s top 5,000 fastest-growing businesses based on revenue growth from 2005 through 2008, and represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy—America’s independent-minded entrepreneurs. During the three (3) year period beginning in 2005, Confero has experienced

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Customer Wait Times:  Ideas to Make the Wait More Pleasant

by Confero Inc.

The Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik (“The Numbers Guy”) talked with our own Rob Barry, along with other experts, about the customer view of time spent waiting in line.

Rob knows a thing or two about wait times. He has worked with our grocery store clients to measure customer experience for the past six (6) years. As Rob stated to Carl, “Grocery stores are focusing more on quickness of checkout probably than ever before. Society has created an environment where everyone is in a hurry.”

In his August 18, 2009 blog The Waiting Game, Bialik digs into the art, science and numbers behind “queuing”, “standing in line” and “standing on line”.

Is customer waiting time about math or perception…or both? Thanks, Carl, for a fascinating look at waiting!

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