What is Mystery Shopping?

The Market Research Society describes mystery shopping as:

"The use of individuals trained to observe experience and measure the customer service process by acting as prospective customers and undertaking a series of pre-determined tasks".

There are a number of techniques used as part of a mystery shopping research programme, which include:

• Customer service evaluations
  
• Telephone mystery shop audits
  
• Exit interviews with customers

At Ripple Check Limited our shoppers are trained to observe areas of customer service which may sometimes be overlooked by business owners.
Our shoppers work to clearly defined briefs designed to "see what you don't".

Helping your business

• Mystery shopping is an ideal tool to measure the effectiveness of service delivery, training initiatives, sales programmes and bench marking services among peer groups.
  
  
• Improving profits, retaining customers and achieving best value are the fundamental elements of any business. Understanding the needs of your customers will give your company the ability to develop staff training programmes and marketing campaigns that would improve your competitive edge.
  
  
• Helps clients accurately measure feedback from real customers.
  
  
• The quality of customer service tends to be more important to a customer than many other factors. In fact many of the top firms rely on their good reputation to charge a more substantial price for their service.
  
  
• A recent TARP survey showed that 90% of dissatisfied customers do not make complaints as to avoid unpleasantness (human nature!).
  
  
• If, for some reason, customer service levels are deteriorating, you need to know before your customers perceive there is a problem. There is usually a significant delay between service levels falling and customers noticing, therefore, taking their business elsewhere. Indeed, it may take some time before a definite trend of falling orders is identified by the company.
  
  

Mystery shopping is arguably the fastest and most effective method of obtaining hard objective management data about customer service levels.

The Benefits

Research shows that it is the quality of human interaction which has the greatest effect on customers perception of a company, therefore, where there is a little difference between competing products or services, high quality customer service can give the competitive edge.

• Cost effective monitoring of service levels.
• Identifying staff in need of further training.
• An effective deterrent against dishonesty, poor service or bad practice.
• Repeat business comes from ensuring customers are genuinely satisfied, therefore, repeat sales save unnecessary expenditure on advertising and promotions.