Mystery shopping is a technique that has been utilized for decades that aims to increase workplace efficiency and management techniques. A business owner who owns a brick and mortar store will want management that gives out the best customer shopping experience. Badly optimized customer service can lead to issues that will either damage a business’s reputation or even cause issues to go viral in today’s digital world. However, thanks to mystery shopping agents, company owners have been able to garner significant data that has helped revamp techniques to handle customers. This has in turn improved shopping experiences and satisfaction of people buying and visiting, generating better overall results in a business’s success. 

Nowadays, mystery shoppers not only operate to serve physical retail settings but are also trained to manage unorthodox platforms like online shopping channels and support networks. The real-time feedback given by testing specific scenarios allows the mitigation of risks and opens up more opportunities for change and improvement. For best results, mystery shopping tools are best paired with a traditional quality monitoring program. JM Ridgeway has come up with three needs a company might have that will be easily fulfilled by these programs:

Immediacy

Quality monitoring provides a wide overview of the way a customer experience program is performing. Mystery shopping, on the other hand, allows companies to receive real-time diagnostics and instant feedback to agents. This prevents issues proactively rather than constant coaching after quality checks. Being able to immediately identify and manage customer experiences are integral in the world today’s digitally dominated experience. 

Consistency

There is no doubt that even some of the giants in the customer service world face unhappy customers that flood into their contact centers. When customers contact customer service with complex issues, ensuring that agents are skilled and knowledgeable enough to handle each situation is crucial in running a business. Using mystery shopping, this can present agents working for your company with a wide variety of scenarios to test their abilities and see how well they can deal with pressing tasks. This will also reveal weaknesses in the system and give a reference point on where to start fixes and improvements. By training your employees and agents to deal with situations with utmost professionalism and confidence, the ratings of your company will likely improve quickly. 

Specific Risks

Some industries have critical compliance needs, such as transportation, healthcare, proper financing, and customer interactions that regularly present the need for service teams. Customers will likely be contacting agents through phone, email, chat, or social media, which makes it a good avenue for mystery shoppers to test readiness and confidence. When risks are involved in the trade, errors, and miscalculations can cause massive damages to the reputation of a company, as well as slap it with compliance-related fines. When you train contact center agents to deal with mitigating risks that can be harmful to business operations, you can save millions of dollars in potential fines. 

Conclusion

Mystery shopping has evolved significantly from being a physical program that visits stores and assists in overall management technique improvements. With the shift of many businesses to the online world, especially now during COVID, where the world’s processes of shipping and ordering items have been changed, mystery shopping is a must. Keep your business flowing and running at optimal speeds with these programs and you will see a massive improvement. 

For the best business experiences you can offer to your customers, hire a mystery shopper from JM Ridgway to optimize customer service today. With a history of results providing top-tier management improvements and determining best practices and weaknesses to improve on, our mystery shopping team is the best option.

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