Mystery Shopping has been our major competency and area of work since 2001.

Mystery Shopping is the practice of service and sales quality evaluation by pre-trained shoppers who are conducting the visit as if they were ordinary customers. Mystery shoppers measure the actual fulfillment of the client company’s own service standards by the client company personnel:

• Meeting the customer;
• Customer service;
• Sales techniques;
• Personnel competencies;
• Dealing with complaints and returns;
• Visual design and overall location cleanness;
• POS material positioning;
• Cash desk operation;
• Staff appearance;
• Announcement of promotions and special offers.

Mystery Shopping measures customer experience and customer interaction with a client company. These are the defining factors of customer satisfaction, which have direct impact on the purchase decision in retail business.

Usage trends. Mystery shopping programs have gained rapid market popularity and use because of their usability and quick measurable effect.

Mystery Shopping applications:

• Creation of control means keeping service personnel at the peak of their performance;
• Stimulating important staff actions (active sales, promotions, etc);
• Encouragement of best employees practices;
• Service quality as KPI in personnel motivation system;
• Focused training to fix the problems found;
• Strategic analysis and investment planning;
• Competitor intelligence.

During recent years, some of 4Service clients were even able to prove a high Return on Investment (ROI) from Mystery Shopping. Having conducted internal research, they have detected and proved a direct connection between Mystery Shopping expenditure and retail profits. i.e. the more they spend on measuring and improving their service quality, the more money the company makes. These companies now include Mystery Shopping programs in their annual action plans as an important means of achieving their financial goals.

Benefits. When used skillfully, a long-term Mystery Shopping program leads to the following improvements of key retail indexes:

• Increase of buyer/visitor ratio (the conversion rate);
• Growth of average transaction/receipt value;
• Increase of sales of value-added goods and services;
• Growth of sales per staff member;
• Re-visit purchase growth (increased customer/client loyalty);
• Improvement of financial indexes.

Effectiveness criteria. In order for a Mystery Shopping program to be effective and bring about the desired results, it is necessary to keep to the following key principles:

• Communications support;
• Mystery shopper profile match to the client’s customers;
• Timely reporting;
• Report accessibility to retail personnel;
• Integration with personnel motivation system;
• Positive approach;
• Keep it simple and understandable.

Starting. The launch of a long-term Mystery Shopping project is a crucial stage in laying the foundations for the success of the entire project. During this stage it is necessary to make balanced decisions about the project goals, result applications, program design, evaluation frequency and communications support. Project preparation also includes the definition and creation of the following:

• Step 1: Project goals and result applications;
• Step 2: Parameters, geography, evaluation frequency and data access structure for staff and management;
• Step 3: Technical requirements (purchase and/or audio recording etc);
• Step 4: Mystery Shopper profile and scenarios;
• Step 5: Evaluation form (survey);
• Step 6: Data control tools;
• Step 7: Project training module for mystery shoppers, including all instructions;
• Step 8: Access provision and client training in Shopmetrics systems usage;
• Step 9: Introductory seminar for Client management and staff as part of communications support program.

A Mystery Shopping program launch normally takes 1-2 months; its duration depending on the client’s product/service complexity and the provider’s experience within the industry.

Decisive success factor
A Mystery Shopping program will only be successful if the client company’s top management is aware of the necessity to improve service. It is also important to understand that no service improvement is possible unless service quality monitoring and control are implemented. If service quality is considered a key corporate value by the management, it will sooner or later be accepted as that by the service personnel as well. In such cases a Mystery Shopping program will not only be necessary, but even crucial for the company’s ‘service constructors’.

4Service™. Today we are ready to offer our clients a number of options and variations in Mystery Shopping, which are based on our vast expertise and access to the latest technologies on the market:

• Traditional Mystery Shopping;
• Audio recorded shops;
• Mystery Calls;
• Suggestive Sell Priority;
• Suggestive Sell/Instant Reward;
• Joker Shops;
• Remedial Shops;
• Integrity Shopping;
• Mystery Employee;
• Acceptance Tracking;
• Third Party Shopping;
• POS auditing.

You can contact us right now to get more detailed information about our capabilities and experience. Contact us...