Author: Admin

Customer service is full of surprises. Sometimes, no matter how well we plan customer service strategies, something goes awry.  Usually, the customer is the first to know and the associate may be taken by surprise.   How does your team handle service recovery? Is your team prepared to respond in the best way possible when service recovery is needed?

Last month, Confero posed an interesting question to mystery shoppers:

Mystery shoppers observe and report on customer service every day.  What is the one thing an employee or business can do to turn a negative customer service experience into a positive one?

We received many insightful comments, including these:

“It’s the willing spirit that makes the difference; showing that they are listening, and that they want to make things right. “

A few months ago, Confero revealed 25 mystery shopper comments that shed some interesting light on shopper experiences in a humorous way. We know our clients take mystery shopping reports seriously, as do we, but comic relief is always welcome, so we decided to share more funny comments. Enjoy!  

• “Since there was not a bagger available, the customer bagged himself.”
•  “The music was not on, but a few employees behind the counter were singing ‘Hotel California.’”
• “When I entered the location, I saw one customer being hung up by the cashier.”

Customer Experience Measurement Firm President Receives Committee Contributor Of The Year Award

CARY, N.C. – Elaine Buxton, president and CEO of Confero, Inc. (https://www.conferoinc.com), a national customer experience measurement firm, hasbeen named a 2011 Committee Contributor of the Year by the Women’s Foodservice Forum (WFF), a leadership development organization that empowers women in the foodservice industry to achieve their highest potential. Buxton was honored for her work on the Executive Programming (Summit) committee. The annual WFF Executive Summit was held in Sept. 2010, and offered executive-level education, provided by the Kellogg School of Business, in an intimate environment. Buxton received the award for her record of achievement of prompt and timely committee work and project fulfillment; enthusiastic and visible contributions that helped the committee and WFF succeed in its goal; consistent demonstration of significant efforts and contribution to the committee work; focus on developing the committee and herself; and exceeding expectations of committee chairs and assisting in making the committee better than it was in previous years.

Here at Confero, we get lots of questions from mystery shoppers asking how they can improve their shop ratings.  One easy way to improve your shop rating is to make sure you are providing a clean, concise mystery shop report every time.  Here is a list of the Top Six Mistakes to Avoid When Completing a Mystery Shop Report:

1. Copying and pasting shop information.   Each mystery shop is unique, so each mystery shop report should be unique to each individual shop.  Our clients do not accept reports with copied or “canned”comments, as they expect each unique mystery shop/audit visit’s conversation to be reported individually. That’s what they are paying for. Copied or canned comments imply that the mystery shopper did not make the required observations or give them full attention.  For more details about this, see Cathy Stucker’s blog about all the “Dangers of Copy and Paste.”

Unfortunately, scam artists have targeted unsuspecting consumers under the disguise of mystery shopping companies for several years now.  Recently, there have been a couple of news stories involving a few of these scams.  Last year, the wire transfer company, MoneyGram had to pay $18 million to settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission because it was found that “MoneyGram agents helped fraudulent telemarketers and other con artists who tricked U.S. consumers into wiring more than $84 million within the United States and to Canada.”  Also, in early April of this year, a man was sentenced to six years in prison for running a $6 million job scam.