Choosing a care home is a significant decision, often made under pressure and involving vulnerable individuals. Mystery Shopping helps care providers see their service through the eyes of families and prospective residents, revealing opportunities to raise standards and increase admissions.
Customerwise offers a comprehensive, sector-specific approach, with additional services to support ongoing improvement and occupancy optimisation.
Schedule a discovery call or call now on 01392 984224.
Testimonial
We’ve worked with Customerwise for the past two years to carry out mystery shopping across our portfolio of care homes…Tamsin and her team are great to work with – friendly, professional, and always willing to adapt to our needs.
They took the time to understand our business and created a bespoke mystery shopping programme tailored to our business and the care sector. Their reports are detailed and informative, providing valuable insights that have helped us make positive, practical changes to improve the experience we offer.
We’re happy to recommend Customerwise to other organisations looking for a thoughtful and reliable approach to mystery shopping.
Allegra Care
Mystery Shopping for Care Homes: Optimising the Enquiry Experience
Our Mystery Shopping programmes are designed to help care home operators increase admissions by giving clear, independent insight into every stage of the enquiry experience.
We focus, of course, on what is visible to a visitor and on the moments that matter most for conversion: from the first enquiry, through first impressions on arrival, home tours, and professional follow-up.
By shining a light on the quality of staff interactions with both visitors and residents, these programmes reveal practical opportunities to raise standards while creating a more reassuring, confidence-building experience for families and prospective residents.
Each individual enquiry (including any and all stages) generates its own report, completed using a template agreed with you. Reports are divided into sections, each reflecting a stage of the journey. Report templates typically include scoring and narrative feedback.
All reports are available in our online reporting platform SASSIE, with tiered access and tailored dashboards for different stakeholders. User-friendly widgets help you spot patterns and trends and identify high-priority issues.
The reporting and the enquiries themselves are set up to give you a clear, actionable view of where standards can be raised and how admissions can be optimised.
Our Mystery Shopping Services for Care Homes
There are several ways Mystery Shopping can be used and approached within care homes.
Comprehensive, End-to-End Mystery Shopping
Our default approach is to help clients review every step of the enquiry handling process that affects occupancy: from the initial enquiry, through first impressions and tours, to timely and professional follow-up.
Observations focus generally on interactions between staff and the mystery shopper making the enquiry. However, they can also cover interactions between staff members and between staff and residents. These moments can reveal much about the culture and standards of care.
Although we usually cover these stages comprehensively, we can focus on specific channels or stages as needed.
Telephone, Online, and Booking Enquiry Testing
We test phone calls (using our StealthCaller VoIP system, which ensures a consistent and unique phone number is used - end-to-end - for all enquiries ), as well as emails, online forms, online chat, and social media channels.
Most projects include multiple enquiry channels to reflect real customer journeys and to cover all active channels.
Video and Audio-Recorded Mystery Shopping
Audio recording provides crucial detail about what was said and how, which is invaluable for staff coaching and quality assurance. Video Mystery Shopping can also be arranged if and where required.
Competitor Mystery Shopping
Gain a clear understanding of how your offering compares to direct competitors. Competitor Mystery Shopping helps you identify differences in approach, pricing, facilities and availability, and the overall experience.
It can reveal opportunities to adapt, refine your offering, and improve occupancy - whether through service enhancements, activities, or other value-adding changes inspired by what works elsewhere.
Kaizen Action Plans
Kaizen Action Plans is an optional feature within our online reporting platform that helps clients turn feedback into improvement.
If a serious issue is identified through Mystery Shopping or open audits, the SASSIE system automatically invites relevant stakeholders to view the nonconformity, discuss it, and oversee a suitable resolution.
A record of the issue and its resolution then remains in the system attached to the report, for future reference.
Kaizen Action Plans helps you ensure the resolution of any significant issues and track progress, supporting continuous improvement.
Other Services for Care Homes
At Customerswise, we offer a number of additional complementary services in addition to Mystery Shopping. They're all focused on helping clients consistently achieve excellence.
Open Audits
Unlike Mystery Shopping assignments, open audits are performed openly, including direct interaction with staff. They can include an assessment of facilities, cleanliness, accessibility, health and safety, and key procedures or policies. Audits help you maintain high standards and can help you prepare for CQC inspections.
Customer Interviews
Telephone interviews with family members or visitors can provide a deeper understanding of their perceptions and observations, as well as their expectations and priorities.
Website Competitor Studies
We assess your website and those of key competitors using real human testers (matching a suitable target demographic) to help you understand the online experience and identify areas for improvement.
Real Call Listening
We can review and analyse real recorded calls, offering practical insights into enquiry handling and communication quality.
In-Moment Customer Feedback
In-moment feedback makes it quick and easy for visitors or family members to provide feedback - usually through signs with QR codes or NFC tags. This results in a higher volume of specific pieces of feedback (“small-parcel” data), arriving in a constant flow.
The reporting and analytics platform system (provided by our partners at HappyOrNot) processes and summarises all feedback automatically, presenting clear dashboards that highlight patterns, trends, outliers and focus areas - so you get a rich, constantly updated, real-time picture, without needing to spend additional time analysing and interpreting results.
Consultancy and Executive Reporting
Our consultancy and executive reporting services go beyond simply delivering data. We work closely with you to interpret findings, identify key trends and priority areas, and decide on the most effective actions to drive improvement. Whether you need help understanding patterns in resident and family feedback, support with action planning, or practical guidance to implement changes, we provide flexible, hands-on support—ensuring you get real value and lasting results from every project.
Why Choose Customerwise?
- Established 2016. MSPA Elite members. MSPA members since 2018
- Extensive sector experience and sensitivity
- Unique suite of services and innovations (including in-moment feedback, Kaizen Action Plans, etc.)
- SASSIE online reporting with tailored dashboards
- Client-focused solutions, delivered with switched-on proactive account management.
Ready to raise standards your care homes through the eyes of your customers? Book a call or contact us today.