Retailers Making Due with Less – What Does this Mean for The Customer Experience?

A report recently released by The Globe and Mail revealed that some retailers who are looking to boost productivity to combat increasing competition are scaling back their workforces. The article reports that over 45,000 retail jobs were eliminated between 2008 and 2011, with only a small hiring spree in 2012.

This is largely because of the online e-commerce boom. To save on head count and labour costs many retailers have turned to expanding their e-commerce portfolio which leads to increased margins and reduced overhead and infrastructure costs – a retailers dream!

So what do these major changes mean for the customer experience? Well, for the customer who still likes to visit bricks and mortar retail stores (like the grocery store for example), a decreased workforce may mean longer line ups, substandard retail merchandising and an overall reduced customer experience.

A reduced customer experience can bring negative consequences to both the retailer and the brands who have their products listed. A customer who has a bad customer experience with a brand because product is not tagged or not in-stock or easily accessible can cause the brand to lose the customer – perhaps even permanently if the customer tries another brand that they like better.  The same is true for a retailer whose store is cluttered, confusing to navigate, short staffed, and/or has long line ups. This in fact can cause some customers to shift their attention to e-commerce solutions and very likely not yours if the consumer has already had a negative customer experience.

With the growth of social media, customers now refuse to ignore a bad customer experience, and instead will take to their social networks to vent about their frustrations. Since consumers are highly influenced by the things they read on their social networks, the customer experience is now paramount, and making sure that the customer is happy when they leave the store, especially if you want them to return.

Retail intelligence is a smart way to combat these challenges. When your product is being sold at a retail location it is essential that you are aware of the customer experience – this is true whether you are a CPG brand or a retailer.

There are two main reasons that brands and retailers use retail intelligence. The first is to improve the customer experience at the point of sale. The second is to see what the competition is doing. Both of these things are crucial if you want to maintain control over your brand and improve customer experience while still staying on top of the competition.

Retail intelligence through planogram audits and mystery shopping allow you to improve your retail merchandising by making sure that products are being tagged, re-stocked, and located where they need to be. The only way to improve your customer experience is to be really aware of what is happening on the ground so that you can make small adjustments that lead to increased sales and customer retention!

One thing is for certain – retailers’ highest expense is the cost of labour. It can be tempting to cut back, but decisions like reducing your labour force must be thoroughly thought through. The retail industry is so competitive that attempting to make due with less can actually be counter-productive. Retailers who do not want to maintain a full blown workforce and prefer to bring in retail and merchandising support should consider aligning with a retail merchandising company that can provide retail support on an “as needed basis”. Brands: you have little control over the actions of your retailers but stand to lose the most. Many brands also turn to retail merchandising companies to take the power out of the hands of retailers and to have more control over their own retail merchandising.

For more information about improving the customer experience through retail intelligence, or to find out more about our other merchandising services, please visit www.storesupport.ca or call 905-847-6513.

JD Power and Associates Substantiates the Importance of Mystery Shopping Through the 2012 Market Research Bulletin – Information is Power

Retail intelligence is one of the only ways that brands can find out what their customers are experiencing when they visit retail outlets. Most national brands have mechanisms in place to gather consumer information. We have long advocated mystery shopping as the best way to gather this information and a recent research bulletin from JD Power and Associates backs up this position. 

The 2012 JD Power and Associates Market Research Bulletin “Information is Power” looked at some common methods that organizations are using to gather and analyze consumer information and feedback.

In the JD Power and Associates summary, one critical point that is made is that getting the “right” information means “asking,” “listening,” and “watching,” and that gathering the “right” information is key to achieving market differentiation and sustainable growth in a competitive environment.

In the paper, mystery shopping was identified as the central means to watch what customers are doing and experiencing when having an interaction or dealing with a brand. Mystery shopping is by far the most effective way to watch what occurs at the retail level because it gives brands a window into the direct experiences that their customer is having and how they feel about their experience.

Mystery shopping is by far the most effective when administered by a third party. Brands that hire a third party to facilitate mystery shopping are able to receive impartial data that reflects the true happenings at the retail level based on the criteria provided to them.

Mystery shopping can not only be deployed to learn more about your customers but also to learn more about how retailers are managing your brand’s presence at the retail level. This is almost more important than gathering direct customer feedback because in many cases the way that a retailer manages your brand’s presence directly impacts how a customer feels about their experience when purchasing or trying to purchase your products.

Here are some examples:

1.       You sell diapers and your diapers are on sale. A customer attends a retailer and is looking for the best deal on diapers. The retailer was delayed tagging your product as being on sale, resulting in the customer choosing to purchase a different diaper brand because it appears to be the best deal.

a.       Impact to customer – very little because they didn’t even have an opportunity to learn that your product was on sale.

b.      Cost to you – loss of business and an opportunity to have leveraged your sale price to shift brand loyalty to your product

2.       You sell pasta sauce. A loyal customer attends the grocery store to pick up some groceries. They plan to prepare a pasta dinner, a staple in their recipe being your sauce. When they attend the retailer it appears as though your sauce is sold out. Really, more of your sauce is available in the back but the retailer’s employee hasn’t gotten around to restocking the shelf. The customer is in a hurry and decides to purchase a different brand of sauce.

a.       Impact to your customer – a frustrating experience.

b.      Cost to you – loss of business and an opportunity to have leveraged your sale price to shift brand loyalty to your product

3.       You sell beans. A loyal customer attends the grocery store to find that they have moved some products. Some beans, including yours, have been moved to the international isle while others remain with the other beans and corn. Your customer is unable to find your product, and ends up searching for help. They encounter an employee at the retailer who is unaware of where your product is and assumed it was where it always is placed. After spending 20 minutes looking around your customer manages to find your product.

a.       Impact to your customer – a frustrating experience.

b.      Cost to you – in this case you would have been lucky because most customers will not search for your product and will simply shift loyalty.

These types of issues cannot be identified unless you have boots on the ground and the best way to become aware of these types of very common occurrences that can be devastating to a brand is to invest in mystery shopping.

Leveraging the techniques (that includes mystery shopping) addressed in the JD Power and Associates 2012 Market Research Bulletin “Information is Power” will enable you to identify areas within your business that you can strengthen to increase retention, profitability and business growth.

For more information about mystery shopping or for more information about our mystery shopping services please contact Storesupport at 1(877) 421-5081 or visit www.storesupport.ca.

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.

Mystery Shopper Jobs Play an Important Role at Retail and are Plentiful

Mystery shopping (also known as secret shopping) is the method by which a store or a company evaluates its employees’ performance and customers’ experience. A mystery shopper will visit a retail outlet pretending to be a customer. The mystery shopper will interact with employees to assess their customer service and sales abilities.  

Mystery shoppers can be deployed by brands, retailers or companies who offer supporting services to brands and retailers. A mystery shopper will report his or her results, which will reveal to the retailer or brand what they need to do to improve their services.

Apart from evaluating performance, a mystery shopper will analyze other commercial aspects of a retailer’s store. These aspects could be price, availability, quality of the product and customer service via websites, telephones and in person, as well as housekeeping.

The role that a mystery shopper fills is an important one and mystery shopper jobs are in great demand. There are no essential requirements to become a mystery shopper, as shoppers don’t have specific appearance or qualification. With that said, a mystery shopper job is a profession just like any other. While the job entails shopping, which is fun; mystery shopping is a serious business and should be carefully dealt with. To be successful, a mystery shopper must be able to act or pretend, be trustworthy, reliable and professional. Apart from all these characteristics, mystery shoppers should have good writing skills and a clear perspective of reporting their personal opinions so that the truth is not tampered with and the brand or retailer gets a very clear picture of what was observed. Mystery shoppers are relied upon to help stores and brands to uplift their sales by improving customer satisfaction and improving the performance of the employees.

Mystery shopping is useful not just for evaluating the staff’s performance but also for checking the customer service offered by rival businesses. It can be compared with one’s own customer service to find the problem areas. The problems can then be rectified to increase the number of customers and in-turn will increase a retailer’s sales.

Mystery shoppers represent ROI to retailers and brands, especially when they are deployed by third party organizations. This is because third party organizations provide the retailer or brand with a truly impartial review of performance. Third party organizations who specialize in mystery shopping can work with a brand or retailer to pinpoint areas of focus, develop a strategy, and take measurements to ensure that the mystery shopper and outcome of the exercise is effective.

Mystery shopper jobs can be found with organizations that provide these services to brands and retailers. If you interested in becoming a mystery shopper, sourcing mystery shopper jobs through these organizations is your best first step. Because these organizations service so many different brands and retailers, obtaining a mystery shopper job through one of these organizations promises to be exciting and diverse.

The role of a mystery shopper at retail is an invaluable one. In addition, those interested in becoming a mystery shopper will find a fun and rewarding career opportunity as well as a fantastic opportunity to help brands and retailers become more competitive while improving their offering.

For more information about mystery shopper jobs or to apply for a mystery shopper job, please visit www.storesupport.ca or call Bonnie Yhip at 1 877 421-5081.