Is Service Intelligence Mystery Shopping A Must Have For Brands?

Mystery shopping or secret shopping at retail is service intelligence that a retailer simply cannot do without. Service intelligence mystery shopping focuses on providing a brand with much needed intel about what kind of service their customers are receiving at the retail level. Service intelligence mystery shopping is also important to retailers because it lets them know how their staff members are performing. 

The worst thing that a brand or retailer can do is to wait for sales to take a dip to realize where areas for improvement are with respect to the customer services that they are providing to their customers. Top notch customer service leads to brand loyalty which results in life-long customer relationships. Establishing brand loyalty takes significant effort and once you are on top of your game, staying there requires even more focus.

Service intelligence mystery shopping measures people and product performance in-store.

Where brands are concerned, utilizing service intelligence mystery shopping enables you to understand product endorsement at the store level. A great example of this is when consumers approach employees at the retail level and ask about a particular product, asking “which shampoo is the best” for example? Mystery shopping can determine whether the employees are recommending your product? Are your promotional offers being communicated to the customer? Service intelligence mystery shopping also enables you to ensure that the delivery of your brand messaging is correct. When employees are asked about your products, is information being communicated accurately?

Service intelligence mystery shopping can also reveal other issues, like the location of your products in-store, how pricing is being received by other shoppers, planogram compliance, and secondary display compliance issues.

Where retailers are concerned, service intelligence mystery shopping can enable you to measure customer service and manage behavioural issues in your store, and is an opportunity to improve customer retention and loyalty to your store. This ongoing measurement raises the bar and shapes and improves your staff’s performance.

The result of service intelligence mystery shopping delivered through a sales team compliance audit can be eye opening and can reveal issues that could be having a direct impact on your bottom line. Issues in-store that negatively impact the customer, such as long line ups, poor customer service, or staff that lack the required knowledge about the products sold in-store, will reduce sales and brand loyalty. A sales team compliance audit will tell you if you are achieving your customers’ expectations in store.

At the end of a day, when customers are not having a good experience at retail they simply will not choose to visit a particular retailer at all the next time they need to make a purchase. Grocery stores are an excellent example of a type of retail where service intelligence mystery shopping is very important. In many cases, consumers will go to their local grocery store weekly, so the cost to a retailer who has in-store performance issues will face severe financial consequences if a customer has a bad experience and decides not to come back.

Investment in service intelligence mystery shopping is a very important piece to the puzzle that leads to the success of a brand at retail and retailers in general.

For more information about service intelligence mystery shopping or mystery shopping services provided by Storesupport, please call 1 (877) 421-5081 or visit www.storesupport.ca.