Category: Customer Experience

Confero  announced that Elaine Buxton, president and CEO, was recently interviewed for the Ratchet and Wrench article,“Acquiring Customer Feedback.”   In the article, Elaine elaborates on nine important points for implementing of a mystery shopping program.  She explains how factors such as benchmarking, conducting mystery shops regularly and announcing the result all help create a mystery […]

As companies plan for a more profitable 2013, customer service dominates the playing field. Organizations in industries that typically receive bad press about their customer service, such as the airline industry, are even more poised to make inroads to improve customer service. For example,

In 2009, our own Rob Barry, Confero Account Executive, spoke with the Wall Street Journal’s “The Numbers Guy” blogger Carl Bialik forhis Waiting Game article. Rob provided insight from his experience managing mystery shopping programs for grocery store clients. Technology is moving at a much faster pace than 2009, and customer waiting time is a topic worth revisiting. 

Whether you manage a bank, restaurant, service or store, you know that it’s not realistic to reduce wait times for customers in every circumstance. If your company is one that prides itself on impressive and personalized service for every customer, wait times are inevitable. There are ways, however, to create more enjoyable waits for customers, and generate additional sales at the same time.

Developing customized mystery shopping programs across many industries has allowed us to see a variety of wait time strategies.  Through measurement of these strategies and our own observations, here are ways that some organizations convert tiresome wait times into positive customer experiences:

• Automotive or food service companies arrange retail space so that customers view the employees working, whether it an associate who cooks a food order, or an employee who repairs or washes your vehicle.  This is a great way to show customers the quality behind your service while at the same time eliminating boring waits.
• At some Chick Fil-a locations, employees stand near the drive thru entry point and key in orders with

Whether through streamlined mystery shop data, customer survey information, or newsletter tips, our goal is to make it easy for you to view your own customer experience information, as well as the latest trends in the industry.  By now, you may have heard about infographics, a completely visual way for companies to share information.  As companies strive to provide busy customers with relevant information quickly, infographics offer the perfect solution. Customers view these informative images in a condensed format, and the charts can be creative and fun.

As an example, take a look at these customer loyalty infographics, we have collected on our Pinterest. Topics include social customer service, good customer