Mystery Customers – Service and Sales

Checking and Measuring B2C, B2B and Public Sector Performance

There are so many businesses that lose lots of business, due to any or all of:

• employees lacking the full range of Sales and enquiry-handling skills
• different locations or departments not “doing” Customer Service properly
• correct customer processes and pathways being unclear

On the other hand, many businesses can deliver excellent service, this may vary between location and/or individual employees.  Plus, there is a risk that good Customer Service levels may not be maintained if they aren’t monitored.

If you have an effective Customer Pathway (see below), and also a Prime Market Position (see MarketCheckers page), then achieving sales becomes much easier, not only to Consumers, but also B2B Customers.

It is all about measuring how well all members of your Customer-facing teams are able to consistently handle different types and stages of interlinked Customer Service and Sales, and how to improve.

                                      

Keep your Customer-facing Employees on their Toes…all the time

Carefully planned Mystery Customer programmes which test the values, principles and training that you want your staff to provide to customers, will positively reinforce and encourage the behaviour and attitude of customer-facing employees.

Another key point which should be remembered, is that how well-presented your employees are, and also how clean and tidy, or accessible your premises are, can often influence customers’ decisions as to whether or not to purchase…as well as whether or not to return or recommend to others…

Get a Quote for B2C & B2B Mystery Customers – Sales and Service enquiries

 

 

Seven approaches to Mystery Customer Programmes

                                     

1. Mystery Customers for Initial Enquiries, Appointment-making and More Sales

Sales Conversion Percentage – One Key Performance Indicator used by many businesses, is the % ratio of sales enquiries to completed sales. Regular mystery customer programmes will provide detailed feedback on what customer-facing employees did well, and how they can improve their performance.

if mystery enquiries are set up and then used correctly, the sales conversion % will increase over time.  Otherwise, without following this type of test process, it is often difficult for business owners and managers to get accurate feedback on “how good (or otherwise) is the new customer sales experience?”   

We can test this through visit, telephone, email, social media or web enquiries. We can follow up appointment-making with testing out what happens during the appointments themselves, or simply do stand-alone “walk-in” visits.

Remember you only get one chance to make a good first impression, so make sure that you don’t blow your best opportunity. 

                                     

2. Mystery Customers for Compliance

Compliance – If your employees don’t know what they should and shouldn’t do to meet requirements for compliance purposes, then it is a big problem!  Video mystery shopping is the perfect way to check on this, and to provide the means to put things right.

3. Mystery Customers to test Service standards, Onboarding & After Sales Support

Customer Retention and Recommendations – OK, so you have customers who have recently purchased, or signed up…the next stage is to check after initial Sales enquiries, is checking that the correct processes are followed for either or both of the following:

• Onboarding new customers
• Dealing with Customer Service enquiries from existing customers

Again, we can test this through visit, telephone, email, social media or web enquiries.

A key issue to consider is that Customer Satisfaction Surveys can show that the points covered in some companies’ Sales and Customer Service processes, sometimes have noticeable differences from the things which are important to customers, so it is worth comparing these as well.  

 

                                     

4. Mystery Customers for Training, Employee Motivation or as part of an Incentive Programme

Three very good employee-related reasons for conducting regular Mystery Shopping and Customer Experience Reviews and Audits are:

• To identify possible training issues, which can then be addressed 
• To test if and how employees are using their training
• As part of an employee motivation and incentive scheme – reward the best performers

If required, we can also run short, bespoke training modules for you – see the “MarketCheckers” page for more details.  

Get a Quote for B2C & B2B Mystery Customers – Sales and Service enquiries

5. Mystery Customers for Tourism, Regional and Industry Awards

Sometimes, the adjudicators for prestigious awards use mystery customer programmes as part of the criteria for deciding on winners of different types of awards. 

Impartial feedback from Mystery Customers is a very useful method of making fair decisions about the winners of different categories of each award programme. For example:

• Tourism Awards, e.g.
• Industry or sector awards
• Regional Business awards

                                     

6. Mystery Customers as Fieldworkers

Our Mystery Customers are very versatile and can turn their hand to other fieldwork-related tasks.  Whatever your requirement might be, there is a very good chance that we can help you, and maybe we can help you to achieve a cost-saving at the same time.  To find out, just fill in a form, send an email, or call.

7. Use Mystery Customer feedback to outdo your Competitors 

Another very useful exercise is to compare how competitor companies deal with sales and customer service.  This could also be part of a Branding & Positioning project and/or a Price Comparison report – see the “MarketCheckers” page for more details.

We can do all of the above in any Consumer, B2B, or Professional Services situation

A nationwide network of mystery shoppers means that MarketCheckers can quickly, easily and cost-effectively measure and compare service levels and test sales techniques, for all types of enquiries, including Telephone calls, Visits (Video option available) or Online.

Video and audio recordings can be provided as an option (for your own outlets only), or you can just go for the simpler “report-only” approach, which can also be used for outlets of other companies in the same sector as you. 

                                      

Also, by independently and impartially assessing the journey that customers experience, we can identify possible improvements to the process.  Sometimes the results are more reassuring than expected, often they highlight some very useful feedback.  By linking mystery shopping to other feedback, such as sales research and employee surveys, joining all the dots can be quite powerful.

Because of our flexible pay-as-you-go approach with tailor-made reporting, our very reasonably-priced services and most of all our ability to get to the root of the issue at hand, over 90% of our mystery shopping clients come back for more, and most of those remain as clients for years and years, including some very big names and lots of smaller ones.  

Get a Quote for B2C & B2B Mystery Customers – Sales and Service enquiries

                                      

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Do you want to be a Mystery Customer?  

If you’d like to be considered to carry out mystery shopping assignments, why not take a couple of minutes to complete this form in the link below?   

Click here to be a Mystery Shopper with MarketCheckers anywhere in the UK