A Mystery Shopper

Fink's views are echoed at Richer Sounds, who were able to use Aba's techniques to examine the first-time buyer experience, many of whom were women and felt uncomfortable in these types of shop. “They provided exactly the right kind of people to replicate their experience�, says MD David Robinson.

Jacobson believes that, A Mystery Shopper should be qualified to make a judgment on a service experience; they need to understand the pressures of working in a busy store on a Saturday afternoon. Only through experiencing the other side of the counter can assessments be made with empathy, using language which motivates rather than frustrates teams.

The teams at Topps Tiles should be anything but frustrated by being mystery shopped. Anyone who scores 100% on a score card is automatically put into a draw and likely to be jetted off to New York or Paris to do a spot of their own mystery shopping!

The Marketing and Customer Service Director at Topps said “We measure everything we do as a business and we are looking for continuous improvement. We can only measure that if we know where we are, so we make use of every facility that our mystery shopping programme offers us, which includes calls being recorded onto mini-disk and video. We can then use all this information to supplement our core mystery customer programme�.

If there is one aspect of mystery shopping that all users seem to agree on it is the importance they place on the quality of results obtained and how these are used. Ounstead, who receives an e-mailed report using Power Point to display graphic and narrative information, says, 'Copies of all results are given to everyone including our training department. They are used at every level'.

Geoff Fink shares these views. “This programme gives our managers a tremendous advantage in enabling them to see their centers through the eyes of a customer and to identify areas of excellence and those needing improvement�.

Kate Jacobson is happy with the results Aba is obtaining and clear about the future of mystery shopping. “It's about commitment to quality through stringent recruitment, training and performance monitoring methods. Our customer is the store management team and we are providing them with a tool to do their job better as well as an invaluable management information tool for head office. Having an open-door policy for store managers allows us to remove the feeling of big brother and break down communication barriers�.

The big brother issue was overcome at the Co-op in Leeds, where Alun Chisnal is marketing manager and uses mystery shopping in their convenience stores and optical, pharmacy and more recently funeral operations. He says, “There was initially some concern from staff, who felt they were being spied on, but now we send staff into competitor’s outlets to assess them. This is improving their perspective and the responses are much more positive�.

But as the business arena becomes more sophisticated and retailers offer differing channels to satisfy customers' purchasing habits, the need to monitor the customer-retailer relationship becomes more important. A customer may, for instance, purchase an item via the Internet but, if it proves unsuitable, return it to a store.

It's here, according to Jacobson, that multi-channeled mystery shopping offers the opportunity to check every aspect of the different stages of a purchase, from how the product is offered to how payment was dealt with and whether the packaging was up to scratch or whether it was delivered on time.

The message to retailers seeking growth through excellence seems clear-get mysterious!

Mystery Shopping |