Customerwise specialises in Mystery Shopping, including report based / in-person, Video Recorded, Audio Recorded (in-person), Telephone Mystery Shopping, and Online Mystery Shopping (including Video Chat), as well as more bespoke methods for gaining customer feedback and competitor intelligence (both B2C and B2B).
Mystery Shopping is a versatile, powerful management tool, that can help a very wide variety of organisations of all sizes to greatly improve their performance, including those in B2C and B2B settings.
Examples are many and varied and include:
- Retail & B2C businesses
- Insurance
- Call Centres and Contact Centres
- Hospitality, Tourism & Leisure
- B2B Products and services;
- Automotive sales and service;
- Optometrists / opticians / eye care;
- Legal and other professional services;
- Property sales and lettings,
- Education,
- Elder care,
- Transport;
- Local authority services;
… and countless other industries and settings.
As a general rule, wherever there are customers or clients, there is a good chance that Mystery Shopping can help to improve their experiences, along with business performance.
The long-term success of almost any venture relies on customers or clients being satisfied (preferably more than satisfied) at the end of a transaction and, of course, inclined to buy in the first place.
The insights gained from Mystery Shopping can help ensure both.
That’s why it’s been used for decades by successful organisations across the world, for troubleshooting, for benchmarking, for ongoing performance measurement, and for gaining key insights into the customer experience and how to improve it.
It can be combined to great effect with other feedback and reporting tools and techniques to provide powerful, up-to-date performance information, and to inform management decisions.
OK, but what are the really tangible benefits?
Mystery Shopping (with the right execution and support) can help you to build something that’s foundational: a happy, mutually rewarding relationship between your organisation and your customers or clients. Specifically, it can enable you to:
- See your business precisely as customers see you – the good and the bad.
- Show ways to improve your service, and differentiate your whole offering through superior service.
- Prevent negative online reviews – and the resulting damage to your reputation.
- Convert more enquiries into sales – including big ticket goods and services.
- Identify opportunities to add value, cross-sell or up-sell.
- Use impartial (and credible) feedback to support staff training.
- Identify and address specific operational and service-related problems.
- Avoid complaints.
- Optimise your complaints handling procedure to ensure continued good will (everyone makes mistakes occasionally!).
- Analyse and optimise the customer experience – going much further than just “ok”.
- Gain great online reviews!
- Keep staff motivated to provide good service (knowing that it matters every time!).
- Encourage open communication between your customers and you.
- Let customers know that you care enough about them to monitor your own performance.
- Perform competitor research (yes – you can Mystery Shop your competitors too!).
- Monitor and benchmark your performance, against your initial standards, or your competitors’.
It can also help those looking to purchase or sell a business. Feedback gained can help the vendor to maximise the value of the business. Potential buyers can also get a truthful picture of how a business is currently being run.
Various Sales and Service Situations
When many people think of Mystery Shopping they typically imagine “on-site” Mystery Shops, where items are normally purchased in person from “bricks and mortar” retail outlets. Of course it is a very useful tool in those situations, – but it can also produce great results in the following situations:
- Website orders – assessing the process for an entire transaction and beyond.
- Telephone orders and enquiries of all kinds.
- For professional advisors and service providers (e.g. legal advice, and health care services including optical).
- For life-changing, high value “sales” situations like property, education enrolment, or residential care.
- For hospitality (i.e. “Mystery Diners” or “Mystery Guests”) where the service and the entire broad experience can be reported on in detail.
- For other situations where the offering is really about the whole experience (e.g. leisure and tourism, local authority services).
- Transport and Travel – from private hire taxis and chauffeurs to air travel.
The basic model of Mystery Shopping can be used to gain useful information across a range of settings far broader than one might imagine. The specific approach that’s used in each is of course essential for gaining worthwhile results.
If you have an unusual situation (or a more typical one!) and you’re not sure if Mystery Shopping can give you valuable information leading to real business results, get in touch for an informal exchange of ideas. It could lead to some fresh new insights that make a real difference to future business performance.
Mystery Shopping is a big part of what we do. The general benefits of Mystery Shopping are explored elsewhere in this site.
We firmly believe that our Mystery Shopping services (and the way that we work in partnership with clients) are among the best available.
Why? Our clients tell us.
The most passionate feedback that we receive is often from clients that have used other Mystery Shopping companies in the past. Those clients can see the difference.
The approach we take
Planning and delivering bespoke programmes to produce the best results for clients takes real thought and care. It’s all about listening well, thinking hard and being diligent – dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.
See some of our testimonials for reassurance that we are (and we do) those things.
Result areas
We focus heavily on producing results for our clients, and we help as soon as we can to identify clear result areas: specific measurable, high priority areas where we think we can help drive improvements.
We see all client relationships as a partnership, and we see it as our job to find ways to produce results that far outweigh the cost of our service.
Our Mystery Shoppers
We foster close, long-term working relationship with our shoppers. This allows us to deliver high quality, reliable information to clients, consistently. They are provided with crystal clear, comprehensive briefs, and high levels of preparation, support and feedback. We are very selective about the shoppers we work with. We don’t just make do with “anyone we can get”, as some Mystery Shopping sometimes seem to do.
Technology
We use SASSIE, the world’s leading online platform for managing client projects, assignments and reports. This allows clients 24/7 access to their report data, with powerful, and flexibile dashboard features to help them to easily explore the information that’s most important to them.
Through SASSIE, clients also have access to a unique tool called Kaizen Action Plans. This feature allows clients to manage and track the responses to Mystery Shop feedback – all from within the system.
De-risking our proposition
We don’t tie clients in with long contracts, or charge outrageous set-up fees. If a client was ever less than impressed with our service, or any of our reports, they’d be free to cancel their service immediately – and we will issue a credit or refund for the latest relevant piece of work, with no quibbles. So far, this offer has never been taken up.
Why Use Us
So, if you’re interested in obtaining powerful customer insights, why should you call us?
(We prefer to talk with and about clients than about ourselves, but as you are on this page..)
The main reasons are that we’re competent and conscientious. We are are obsessed about producing real business results for clients, and doing the best job possible.
We keep our promises and are totally focused on helping clients achieve the maximum possible results from working with us, whether that’s over 3 weeks or 3 years.
We pride ourselves on our listening skills, our genuine interest in our clients’ businesses, and our ability to ask new and better questions.
If there are weak points, problems or restrictions that hinder performance, we offer clients practical help to identify, solve or remove them. But clients don’t need weaknesses or problems to benefit from our service.
We can help businesses maintain consistency, and to go from “good” to “outstanding”. This can include looking more broadly at customer experiences, and issues that are of rapidly growing importance for customers, such as personalisation of service, increasing convenience and general “ease”, and the removal of friction or stress from transactions.
We work hard to earn trust, by taking action to remove obstacles, and helping clients achieve real results. Clients receive hands-on and proactive account management from a company director.