Mystery Shopping Services

If you have been watching BBC1 for the past may and June you will have been witnessing another example of our growing obsession with the whole concept of mystery shopping services. 'Secret Service' is a four-part series which follows the work of mystery shoppers and the companies that measure service and loyalty.

"You have to have a measurement system to see what is really happening in your outlets," says Stephen Hurst, marketing director of service evaluation company BEM, which is involved in the programmes. "Research shows that if people are not happy they don't complain, they go elsewhere. Good service eliminates dissatisfaction and therefore increases customer loyalty."

As an example, Hurst cites recent research for Ansells Brewery which reveals that each person who visits pubs spends on average pounds 788 a year in them. If that person has one bad experience, he will tell about 13 other people. Therefore one bad experience could cost a pub pounds 11,000 in a year.

"This is where mystery shopping really comes into its own,"says Hurst. "Trained people go in and see what levels of service are being achieved and then we are able to address specific problems that arise from the research findings."

Industry experts claim the current value of the mystery shopping sector is between pounds 5m and pounds 10m and growing fast. Richard Daw, director performance systems of The Grass Roots Consultancy and chairman of the Market Research Society special interest group on mystery shopping, predicts the market value will double by the end of the decade.

The very fact that the practitioners have set up an MRS group underlines the growing importance of mystery shopping. The aims of the group, which includes Grass Roots, BEM, Research International and an industry representative from Lunn Poly, is to establish a set of guidelines for MRS members and to develop quality standards.

"We see design and communication as very important in the process. The survey must be designed realistically and objectively and the way data is then communicated back has to be handled effectively - it must be done in a way that is relevant to the staff in question," says Daw. He cites Burger King as a good example. Results of its mystery shopping exercise are posted up on notice boards in individual restaurants. "It would not suit everyone, but its right for Burger King and is very popular with staff."

Of course, mystery shopping is only one part of a whole menu of loyalty measurement research techniques as Harvey Gilbert, managing director of CPM's newly formed company, Quality Audit Services (QAS), points out: "Mystery shopping measures service, but you also need to measure customer satisfaction and this must be done using standard market research techniques which are developing in their own right." Effective methods are focus groups, consumer panels which measure brand loyalty and frequency and volume of purchase, and the growing area of credit card and smart card purchase data analysis.

Ruth McNeil of Research International says: "In reality the best loyalty research is done by asking the customers themselves. Loyalty is an attitude, a feeling - you have to employ user-friendly, intimate techniques first and then follow up with other appropriate qualitative and quantitative techniques."

Mystery Shopping |