Companies who use mystery shopping programs to boost productivity and revenue often incentivize employees who attain good results. After all, mystery shopping goals are met by people, and people enjoy being rewarded for a job well done. There’s nothing inherently wrong with rewarding top performers, and it can certainly go a long way towards motivating other employees as well. To be effective, however, incentives must be awarded correctly, and that begins with analyzing the data.

The best mystery shopping programs work when the data collected remains unskewed; that is to say, management accepts the numbers for what they are and uses them, not to humiliate staff, but to bring about positive change. If the data is ignored or, worse yet, used incompletely, the results will likely be less than a positive force for change. Using data to catch or fire a ‘bad’ employee is not the focus of mystery shopping. Using the data to demonstrate to that employee where they are falling short of expectations, and offering strategies for improvement, helps to build a strong, loyal staff, leading to higher morale, less turnover and bigger profits.

What kinds of rewards can be given? The choice is completely up to you. Restaurants, for example, might offer free meals. Some also tie manager’s compensation to mystery shopping results, bringing everyone on board in the effort to motivate staff with positive incentives. No doubt you know of the types of rewards that would work in your industry. In most cases, it’s not the reward itself, but the act of rewarding and the proud feeling of being recognized for good work that makes all the difference.

Mystery shopping provides a cost-effective and often self-funding assessment and feedback required to maintain high standards of customer service. Good mystery shopping programs use myriad methods to provide businesses with the critical data on customer experiences to accurately measure key benchmarks like customer service, store appearance, product placement, and loss prevention. Mystery shoppers gather this data by peering into the heart of your business through the eyes of the customer, systematically working their way through the business’s front-line operations using pre-set criteria to make meticulous evaluations that assess the overall customer experience.

Even more so, a well-designed mystery shopping program opens up the daily operations of a business at the front-line level...the level where customers interact with your business, your brand and your employees. In doing so, they shed much-needed light on what your business actually is – unfiltered, unvarnished, and measured in such a way that you can live the consumer experience in the eyes of your customer – and take steps to adjust and correct the things they don’t like to see.

The value of the mystery shopping experience is, literally, the gift that keeps on giving. A well-designed and executed mystery shopping program can increase sales and profitability through a heightened customer experience, giving business a picture of what is happening with the interaction with their customers right now.  Such programs also provide practical ways to improve and optimize services, motivate employees, and generate enthusiasm among customers by exceeding their expectations.

Is cost keeping you from collecting information that leads to higher conversions? Information programs can cost much less than you’d expect-- in some cases, as little as $35 per store.

Consider the following two cases:

Case 1. A national retailer recently increased its budget for an audit of its customer experience, moving from quarterly to monthly measurements because it was able to see definitive ROI from the insights it gained. Spending just $35 per store per month on its mystery shopping program turned out to be “peanuts” when information gathered allowed associate performance and sales to be improved.

$420 a year per store to increase sales turned out to be a bargain. Compare the costs of new fixtures or carpeting. What payback do they offer in comparison? Consider the cost of the 82% of your customers who walk out without making a purchase.>
Unfortunately, too many CFOs look at expenditures from a direct-cost basis without considering the net cost. They fail to see that dollars spent to improve the customer experience drive their top and bottom lines. Expenditures on improving the customer experience are investment dollars, not expense dollars.

Case 2. Another national retailer is stepping up to the plate, even in these uncertain times, by implementing customer and employee feedback systems. The retailer’s objective is to improve their shoppers’ experiences by listening to reactions from actual customers and sales associates. The retailer has commissioned an IVR-driven customer satisfaction program and a web-based employee feedback program. The cost for both of these feedback systems is less than $800 per location annually.

Combining all programs from these two retailers (mystery shopping, customer satisfaction, and employee feedback) totals about $1,200 a year per store, and gives the retailer a 360° business view, providing dramatic payback potential in the toughest retail economic climate in 15 years.

The message couldn’t be clearer. Reductions in programs and information systems leave today’s retailers vulnerable to competition and prevent an understanding of the more demanding mindset of customers. What’s needed is an aggressive commitment to continued information programs, along with complementary data services to fortify retailers for the long haul. Cutting auditing and feedback programs to shore up the bottom line will ultimately have the opposite effect. Partnering with an organization that assists you in communicating the information and in building action plans to foster system-wide improvements, as well as asking the right questions, will deliver the best experience for your customers.

Even in today’s marketplace, customers still have money, but they will become more selective – and will spend that money with retailers who offer them the better experience, no matter what.

How actively do your sales associates conduct follow-through selling? Mystery shopping can help you objectively assess compliance with selling guidelines, utilizing trained shoppers to visit your stores and observe how guidelines are followed. Shoppers are sent into your stores with a list of observables (cleanliness of the store, attitude of the sales associates, etc.) and a list of actions (approached by an associate, had additional merchandise suggested, etc.). After shopping your store, these professionals accurately document their experience and the extent to which they saw each observable and received each action.

Increase Sales By Improving the Customer Experience

Sales strategies and selling themes developed at the corporate level are often not executed at the store level. Most chain executives are so busy and immersed in their jobs that they fail to objectively audit the real customer experience delivered at the store. Sometimes headquarters personnel do not have enough time to conduct store visits and, if they do, it is rare that they actually experience a visit the same way customers do. It is astounding how little most retailers spend on measuring and managing how customers really feel while shopping in their stores.

How Does It Feel To Be Your Customer?
Customer satisfaction surveys provide an accurate view of the customer’s perspective. Satisfaction surveys are conducted by interviewing a sample of your customers to determine their perceptions of your stores and sales associates. Rather than compliance (mystery shopping’s realm) customer satisfaction identifies perceptions – how your customer feels.

The result of a properly conducted and implemented customer satisfaction program is a store-level action plan defining the key drivers of your business – what most needs to be improved to increase your sales.

And that’s how you define the true customer experience.

In good times and bad, retailers’ sales are related to several basic conditions:
• Store locations
• Merchandise offered
• Inventory
• Proximity to competition
• Staffing

Beyond these basics are three additional, service-oriented ways to improve sales:

1. Increasing Conversions
Typically, 82 out of 100 people who walk into a store leave without making a single purchase. That’s a retail conversion rate of only 18%. While this is a statistic begging for understanding, in harder economic times it makes even more sense to know why shoppers leave your stores without making a purchase.

ICC Decision Services offers a sales calculator that easily helps you determine the lift in sales you would receive from an incremental improvement in your conversion rate. As an example, increasing conversion from the benchmark 18% to 25% results in a yearly additional $115K in sales per store! Contact ICC Decision Services to obtain this valuable calculator.

2. Understanding Why Shoppers Leave Without Purchasing
Now we know 82 out of 100 people leave your store without purchasing. But do we know why? Consider conducting customer exit interviews in select locations to uncover the reasons. Exit interviews are conducted on premise, just as customers leave your stores. Trained interviewers intercept these customers, asking them a series of questions that explore exactly why they did not make a purchase. Exit interviews often dispel intuitive explanations. For example, one, big-box retailer discovered they were losing sales not because of inventory outages, but because shoppers could not find the merchandise they wanted.

3. Improve Suggestive Selling To Increase Sales
Our studies show that improving suggestive selling can increase the bottom-line by millions. To effectively increase suggestive selling, provide sales staff with real reasons customers should buy your merchandise, helping staff to reinforce the customer’s decision process.

Of course, you need assurance that sales associates are following through with each and every customer. You can further expand your suggestive sales programs by increasing sales through accessories and related products. Obviously, the more merchandise the customer is exposed to, the greater the likelihood that they will buy something. This means active selling, not passive assistance. Sales associates need to be reminded to actively sell and need motivation follow through.