Mystery Shopper Companies

It's an old truism: You never see yourself the way others see you and, if you're a bank, the way others experience you. Mystery Shopper Companies puts you in your customers' shoes. You may be surprised what you find out.

Competition within the financial services industry is fierce. Often banks, credit unions, insurance companies and brokerage firms go after the same business, spending vast sums to woo customers. But who really knows what keeps customers loyal, or conversely, what motivates them to jump ship? Is it price, convenience, product or service availability or something else? In reality, very few banks know the facts. Instead, they operate on assumption.

And yet, there is a reliable way to gather hard data-mystery shopping can be a highly effective tool for improving customer service and sales performance. Why Shop?

All methods of research provide valuable market analyses. Where mystery shopping programs have the edge, however, is in providing detailed specifics on performance behaviors of customer contact personnel. In short, mystery shopping helps financial institutions get in touch with the realities of the customers' experience.

With such a program in place, it is possible to monitor performance from the customer's perspective, find out if the institution is addressing the customer's needs, preferences and priorities solicit customer input for product/process design and evaluate ongoing efforts at improvement. These observations then enable management to identify competitive strengths and weaknesses, an essential ingredient in the formulation of effective strategy.

From the outset, it is essential to establish clear goals for the shopping program and to define the standards against which personnel are to be evaluated. If bank personnel have no idea what benchmark is being used, they have no standard by which to judge their own performance. For instance, tellers should be told beforehand that the mystery shoppers are checking into such areas as the use of the customer's name, courteous behavior, attentiveness, and accuracy, efficiency and referral skills.

Prior to implementing any customer satisfaction measurement program, banks must determine how they will resolve problems as they are identified. Experienced marketers know that an effective problem-resolution system pays high dividends in strengthened customer loyalty.

Therefore, for maximum long-term gain, make mystery shopping one part of a comprehensive strategic plan to upgrade the sales and service culture of the bank.

Program design. Because internal culture can affect the success of a mystery shopping program, the type of measurement programs that have been used in the past must be reviewed, noting successes, failures and methods used. How did employees respond? Was the evaluation point's in-sync with the training curriculum? Was the scoring system fair? Having this kind of historical perspective enables management to revise the program and create one that will be supported by staff-an essential ingredient in any successful customer service campaign.

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