Four ways Mystery Shopping can improve your CX

Most businesses will be familiar with the idea of mystery shopping – after all, banks and other businesses have been using it since the 1940s to check that staff follow the correct processes when handling cash.

However, you may well be under-estimating just how valuable it could be for your business. In a market where CX differentiation is more important than ever for building customer loyalty and value, it’s a powerful tool to evaluate, improve and differentiate your CX and quality of service. Businesses overlook it at their peril!

Below we explain four examples of how mystery shopping – when expertly designed and delivered – could be a game-changer for your business. But first we’ll give a quick sketch of what mystery shopping campaigns can entail in 2024 because they’re certainly different from their 1940s origins.

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The basics – then and now

As in the 1940s, mystery shopping is an investigation technique that consists of impersonating a customer in order to find out and assess certain specified issues. Since staff don’t know they’re being evaluated, the experience is more authentic than when managers visit.

The 2020s approach to mystery shopping is – not surprisingly – more sophisticated than those 1940s bank ‘customers’, with audits covering, for example, the standard of customer care and service received, the state of the location or usage of promotion collaterals, regulatory compliance or whether certain commercial protocols or processes are being followed, staff performance, the alignment of CX across different channels, and many more aspects. 

To assess, evaluate and report on these or other issues, an expert provider such as Konecta will carefully develop objectives, scenarios and mystery shopper roles, using large teams of trained ‘shoppers’ and a sophisticated range of methodologies depending on the needs of the client and what it wants to achieve. 

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Reason 1: Improving the customer experience

The best-known reason to use mystery shopping is to obtain an objective and detailed view of your customers’ experience and how they perceive it. Mystery shoppers impersonate ‘real’ shoppers and evaluate the interaction, enabling you to identify weaknesses and problem areas that otherwise might not be evident – as well as areas where you are performing strongly.

Example: When a restaurant chain saw that online reviews mentioned differences in the quality of service between its different locations, it asked Konecta’s specialist team to evaluate the CX across all its branches. Discovering from Konecta’s audit and analysis that some employees were not following established customer service procedures, the restaurant chain was able to standardize its processes and offer additional training to staff. Consequently, online review ratings improved by 20%.

To provide the rigorous analysis and valuable signposting of this example, a mystery shopping or audit campaign must be expertly designed, delivered and reported – using a personalized approach and tailored solutions, as we do at Konecta. As well as using innovative tools for more efficient data collection and reporting, we have a database of more than 10,000 active and segmented shoppers across or Spanish-speaking / Portugal / Andorra area alone, with proven experience in sectors such as technology, health, automotive, construction, tobacco, energy and finance.

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Reason 2: Evaluating compliance with standards and policies

In this use of mystery shopping, the audit is designed to check that staff are correctly following your company’s policies and procedures. In regulated sectors, where compliance is crucial to avoid sanctions and reputational damage, these audits are essential, but they can be valuable in other sectors too. For instance, shopper teams can check that your different staff or locations are achieving compliance and consistency on anything from data handling, to up-to-date sales messaging and loyalty scheme promotions, to correct displays and explanations for different products.

Example: A pharmacy business needed to know if all its individual pharmacies were complying with the regulations for dispensing medicines and handling personal data. Konecta designed and executed a mystery shopper program to evaluate regulatory compliance at each pharmacies, and discovered several minor variations across the network. As a result, the business was able to correct these issues well before they resulted in regulatory issues or penalties or any reputational problems, and improved its compliance rate by 30%.

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Reason 3: Developing employee performance and motivation

Mystery shopping can also provide detailed and constructive feedback on employee performance, allowing managers to identify specific training needs and motivate employees by recognizing strong performance. 

Results can also feed into wider decision-making about future design of training and performance management programs, ultimately leading to your staff being better equipped to offer high-quality and consistent service and CX and to act as effective ambassadors for your brand. 

Example: A clothing retail business wanted to improve customer care and to motivate employees to offer better service, so asked Konecta’s mystery shopping experts to make periodic, detailed evaluations of its employees. The feedback from these evaluations provided the starting point for creating incentive programs and training. Employees who were rated positively received recognition and bonuses, which contributed to a 25% improvement in service quality and staff motivation. 

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Reason 4: Identifying opportunities for improvement and differentiation

Through providing a better understanding of your customers’ experience and your employees’ compliance with standards and processes, mystery shopping is a key tool to identify areas of opportunity. 

For instance, mystery shoppers can detect specific opportunities to improve areas of your customer service, products or processes, enabling you not only to address problems but also to seek competitive advantage. As well as showing the route for a one-off improvement action plan, regular mystery shopping and audits allow you to check whether action plans are being implemented and applied effectively, or whether it needs to be tweaked or adapted. 

Through evaluation of your own business and your competitors, you gain actionable insights on how to differentiate yourselves successfully through continuous improvement and innovation.

Example: Konecta designed a mystery shopping campaign for a supermarket to discover areas where it could differentiate itself from competitors, helping it to attract and retain customers in a highly competitive marketplace. It wanted Konecta’s ‘shoppers’ to carried out detailed evaluations of all its locations, paying particular attention to the layout and presentation of the store, the quality and freshness of products, the standard of customer service around the stores, and the quality and efficiency of the payment process. 

As a result of Konecta’ s reporting and recommendations, it was clear that, although the quality and freshness of products was high, the presentation and visibility of products could be improved. In addition, the audit showed that service at cash registers could be made more efficient, in order to reduce customer waiting times. Acting on these insights, the supermarket implemented new display and signage techniques in its fresh products section, highlighting the freshness and quality of these products; it also introduced a faster cashier system and trained staff in efficiency techniques for payment processes. 

These improvements not only produced an upswing in customer satisfaction, they also created a perception of the supermarket as a provider of high-quality, fresh products and fast, efficient service. This shift helped the business to attract more customers who cared about product quality and their time.

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What to look for from mystery shopping providers

As those four examples show, mystery shopper services are a powerful tool to improve customer experience, guarantee compliance with standards and policies, and develop and motivate staff – delivering significant and positive impacts for businesses in all sectors.

To deliver these benefits requires expertise and scale on the part of the provider, and the ability to cover different mystery techniques, business areas and sectors, and operations (including fieldwork, data management and quality. 

Konecta, for example, as well as having segmented databases of active shoppers and experience across multiple sectors, takes care of the entire campaign or audit, from defining objectives and optimal methodologies, to carrying out the fieldwork, right through to analysis, evaluation and suggestions for CX improvement, always working hand in hand with clients.

Advanced technology is also important, and Konecta has a high-capacity tool that maximizes data obtained, accelerates fieldwork and adapts data to the profile of each user. Clients can access information online in real time throughout the field marketing work to check possible incidents or emerging trends, and there are user-friendly predefined reports to monitor trends, rankings, response analysis, reviews, and tailored summaries that facilitate the personalized extraction of information by the client. The service can be part of an end-to-end relationship but is also offered independently, with clients able to contract it without using Konecta’s other comprehensive services.

Through these strengths and its detailed, anonymous and tailored approach to mystery shopping, Konecta has helped numerous brands to identify areas of improvement. The results can include improved customer focus and customer relationships, increased customer satisfaction, higher perceived value of brands, and better commercial results. Looking at it that way, any brand that doesn’t make the most of mystery shopping and audit campaigns is missing a huge opportunity. 

If you’d like to know how Konecta could help your own business benefit from expert mystery shopping, we’d be delighted to tell you more. Get in touch at konectamysteryshopper@konecta-group.com

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