Using Mystery Shopping to Motivate Frontline Staff

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.