Retirement communities are unique environments that blend independent living with hospitality, leisure, and integrated care and support solutions.
(see also our page focused on care homes)
Operators strive to deliver consistently high standards, intentional and impressive service, and a vibrant community feel across a wide range of facilities and resident interactions.
Customerwise provides a powerful answer, one that combines credible Mystery Shopping (focused on enquiry handling, lead conversion and occupancy), in-moment feedback for real-time operational insight, and strategic support to help you achieve and maintain excellence throughout your community.
(For those seeking a less covert approach to Mystery Shopping, open audits are also available.)
What makes Customerwise different?
- Realistic, reliable Mystery Shopping: Our exceptional pool of shoppers and our infrastructure enable us to deliver realistic multi-stage enquiries. Our VOIP phone system ensures a consistent and unique caller identity for each enquiry. It supports call recording, voicemail, and SMS to enable joined-up, authentic interactions—so your feedback truly reflects a genuine enquiry.
- We bring and draw on our experience working with clients in property sales and management, elder care, hospitality, leisure, retail, and other industries.
- Sector expertise: Our 10 years of experience span property, hospitality, leisure, and retail, giving you the benefit of insights from industries where customer service and the physical customer experience are paramount.
- Comprehensive approach: We offer a unique blend of Mystery Shopping, in-moment feedback (powered by HappyOrNot), and other services, all enhanced by strategic consultancy. Our feedback systems offer both in-depth analysis of the enquiry journey and continuous, actionable data on every aspect of your operation.
- In-moment feedback as a game changer: Terminals, signs, and digital invitations allow you to gather instant, location-specific feedback from residents, visitors, and families. High-volume "small-parcel" data reveals patterns, pain points, and successes in real time, empowering you to act quickly and uphold high standards across all departments and facilities.
- Customised reporting and action planning: Our SASSIE platform delivers individual reports for every enquiry, with custom dashboards for different stakeholders, hierarchical access, automated trigger alerts, and Kaizen Action Plans to drive improvement and accountability. Supporting files, such as call recordings and visit notes, are conveniently included in individual reports.
- Strategic partnership: We work with organisations committed to consistently achieving excellence, helping you interpret results, identify trends, and implement solutions that drive occupancy, satisfaction, and operational excellence.
Schedule a discovery call or call now on 01392 984224.
Testimonials
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
Who We Help
We support property operators, senior living and elder living providers, and organisations committed to consistently delivering exceptional standards, whether your communities are luxury or affordable, for-sale or rental.
Mystery Shopping Services for Retirement Communities
Our Mystery Shopping programmes are always tailored to client requirements and priorities.
Assessments focus on the enquiry and lead conversion stage, covering every step from first contact through to tours, proposals and follow-up.
While our main focus is the enquiry journey, Mystery Shop reports will routinely include valuable observations about the wider environment, operations, and culture that affect resident experience.
We carefully select and brief shoppers who can convincingly present as matching the demographic and financial profile required for your community, ensuring credible, realistic feedback.
Every Mystery Shop enquiry or journey generates an individual report, delivered via our SASSIE platform. Clients benefit from:
- Supporting files (e.g. audio recordings, video footage, images, documents) are all available conveniently within each relevant report.
- Custom dashboards designed for different stakeholders
- Hierarchical access levels
- User-friendly analysis tools
- Automated trigger alerts for key findings
- Kaizen Action Plans to ensure issues are addressed and improvements tracked
(Clients may opt to include open audits of sites either as an alternative to Mystery Shopping activity, or in addition. Audits can include inspection of non-public areas and documentation, open staff interaction, and photographic evidence, and can incorporate a covert stage at the start to help ensure that some elements are recorded "as is".)
There are several channels and approaches that can be applied to Mystery Shopping for this industry.
Multi-stage Mystery Shopping
This is the most popular approach. Multi-stage enquiries mirror those made by genuine prospective residents. These combine different channels and enquiry stages (for example, an initial online or phone enquiry, a booked tour, and follow-up via email and/or phone) to provide a complete view of enquiry-handling standards. Enquiry processes can be designed to include overnight stays where required.
In-person Mystery Shopping
Visits help assess standards of presentation, hospitality, facility management, professionalism, sales process adherence, personalisation, and sales effectiveness. In addition to the visit itself, follow-up activity is normally logged and included within a report.
Telephone Mystery Shopping
Telephone calls can be crucial for converting initial interest into a booked tour. Our VOIP system ensures a unique number is used for each enquiry or enquiry process. Where the telephone stage is only one of several, our system ensures realism through consistent caller identity and includes call recording, voicemail, and SMS.
Online Mystery Shopping
Online Mystery Shopping helps evaluate how online enquiries (via forms, chat, or email) and online communication, as part of a longer process, are handled, focusing on response times, helpfulness, professionalism, accuracy, clarity, and follow-up.
Video Mystery Shopping
Where appropriate, covert video can be used during site visits to capture staff interactions and assess the quality of service and the environment. Video chat interactions can also be recorded.
Audio Mystery Shopping
Covert audio recordings provide an additional layer of detail on staff interactions and compliance. Audio recording can be a good option for clients who don't want to use covert video for whatever reason.
In-home Mystery Shopping
Even in-home visits can be arranged where relevant, to assess consultations or meetings in a resident’s own home environment.
Competitor Mystery Shopping
Mystery Shopping can be used to compare and benchmark your enquiry handling standards against local competitors, providing actionable insights to refine your approach and stand out in a competitive market.
Compliance Mystery Shopping
Mystery Shopping can help assess adherence to relevant industry codes and regulations (e.g. FCA), giving you confidence in compliance and service standards. Compliance elements are often incorporated into wider programmes that also focus on enquiry handling.
Testimonials
We have a number of measurement programmes that Customerwise deliver for us. Tam and the team provide us with a professional, flexible and efficient service, which is backed up with a sophisticated online portal that gives us real insight into areas of our business, enabling us to consistently support our onsite team and improve upon customer experience.
Tam and her team are always on hand to swiftly answer and provide solutions to all our queries and I can highly recommend their services.
Miller Homes
Other Services for Retirement Communities
In-moment Feedback
Our in-moment feedback solutions, powered by HappyOrNot, are a game-changer for multifaceted, complex, and immersive operations like retirement communities. Terminals, signs, and digital invitations gather instant, location-specific feedback from residents, visitors, and families.
Feedback data is made super quick and easy for residents and guests to provide, and the feedback is focused and specific. This "small-parcel" data provides you with a reliable, real-time picture of operational performance across all departments, helping you respond quickly and maintain the highest standards at every touchpoint.
Open Audits
We can deliver open-site audits as an alternative to, or in addition to, Mystery Shopping. This can be useful for businesses that want to assess areas or aspects that require open cooperation with staff members. Audits can cover many aspects of facility management, operation, presentation, management and documentation. Audits can include an initial covert element.
Strategic Consultancy
We work with you as a partner, helping you interpret results, identify actionable trends, and implement solutions that drive results. Flexible advisory support is tailored to your priorities.
Competitor Website Studies
Our competitor website studies compare your website with those of key rivals, using real, relevant human testers who convincingly present as prospective residents or family members. Each tester completes structured tasks and enquiries on both your site and competitors’, assessing usability, clarity of information, and the overall digital experience.
Your own website is always included in the study, so you gain clear, actionable insights on how your online presence compares and where you can improve to stand out in the retirement community sector.
Customer Interviews
Independent and structured interviews with residents, family members, or prospective residents can be conducted to gain deeper qualitative insights into perceptions, needs, and experiences.
Testimonials
Customerwise have been superb to deal with. Firstly, their reporting is detailed and comprehensive – the mystery shoppers that they choose are clearly well trained and well briefed, meaning that our monthly reports are as realistic and accurate as possible. And secondly, Customerwise are extremely flexible and willing to engage with partners on how to improve- they move quickly to implement any new changes and are always willing to listen to clients to try to meet their needs. Tamsin and the team are approachable, friendly and knowledgeable- would highly recommend.
CA Ventures
Why Choose Customerwise?
- Established in 2016; MSPA member since 2018; MSPA Elite member
- Proven, long-term Mystery Shopping provider with broad experience across property, hospitality, leisure, and retail
- Systems and processes for realistic, reliable Mystery Shopping feedback
- The only provider able to combine Mystery Shopping and in-moment feedback via HappyOrNot
- Uniquely powerful data-driven insight (including in-moment customer feedback) supporting you in achieving excellence consistently
- Flexible, bespoke programmes available with switched-on strategic support
Discover a More Powerful Solution
If you want to achieve and maintain excellence across your retirement community, speak to Customerwise. Our unique combination of Mystery Shopping, in-moment feedback, and strategic support will help your developments excel and stand out.