Have you ever wondered if you could incorporate your favorite spy movie in your business? Weapons and killing aside, there’s a way to combine the excitement of going undercover to your business growth. The term is called “mystery shopper,” and this refers to people that you hire to study your current system and point out flaws that need improvement. All work happens incognito while they go undercover as a customer at your store. How cool is that?
Mystery shoppers help you improve our customer satisfaction levels by objectively rating their overall shopping experience in your retail store. In doing so, you’ll get a detailed overview of what areas need development. Consequently, mystery shoppers can also highlight areas where you’ve excelled.
However, the question still lingers, “Do you need that for your business?” To help you decide, here are four benefits that mystery shoppers can bring on the table for your business:
- They analyze you and your competition
Who says that mystery shoppers can only go incognito in your store? There’s an unwritten rule where they can target your competitors too. When you hire a mystery shopper company to spy on your rival(s), they can pinpoint critical aspects of what makes your competitor’s system better than yours.
Aside from customer service practices, you can also compare their pricing scheme and unique selling proposition to yours. In doing so, you can create necessary actions to become more competitive against them.
- They can rate your internal system’s efficiency
You might have created your current internal system with customer satisfaction in mind, but that doesn’t always reflect the way you expect it to perform. Mystery shoppers help determine if your current exercises are conducive to making a buying decision. Once they point out all deficiencies, you can make changes to your existing internal system to improve customer retention. In doing so, you improve sales performance.
- They can judge employee performance
The most uncertain variable in your business establishments is your staff performance, primarily when you’re out of the scene. Your staff might be shoving their best foot forward whenever you’re around but might be poorly performing when the coast is clear.
Mystery shopping enables you to track down their actual performance daily. Their professionalism, helpfulness, enthusiasm, and integrity can be the complete opposite of what you might expect them to behave. Consequently, mystery shopping helps identify hard-working employees. When you’ve identified who these are, you can focus on ways to improve employee retention.
- They can assess the atmosphere of your shop
When you hire a secret shopper company, they’re capable of giving you an objective assessment of your shop’s atmosphere. In essence, these include its cleanliness, organization, decor, aesthetics, interior design, inventory selections, and more. Remember, although you might think that your shop already passed the checklist for a spot-on retail store, your customers might have another opinion about it.
Conclusion
Undercover shoppers help you uncover all of your deficiencies with your current management and systems. When you know all of these, you can make the necessary changes to improve sales performance. Aside from your shop, they can also spy on your competition so that you can emulate their best practices and include them in yours.
Do you need to hire a secret shopper company? Contact us today to see how we can help.
