Why use Mystery Shopping? When there are so many other tools available?
It’s true. These days, there are some incredible tools to help businesses obtain feedback from customers and engage with them. These tools are becoming ever more advanced and useful.
Customer surveys (which can now be initiated in so many different ways) are a great way to gauge customer perceptions and understand what they want and care about. The same applies to reviews and feedback shared on social media.
In-moment customer feedback is a revolutionary way to obtain real-time feedback from customers, empowering businesses to observe patterns that they would never see otherwise.
However, while surveys, reviews, and social media monitoring are all essential parts of an effective feedback system, none of them provides the advantages that are offered by Mystery Shopping. Mystery Shopping provides advantages that perfectly fill the gaps left by these other tools.
The feedback available from Mystery Shopping is unrivalled in terms of
- Scope – reports can cover every step and stage of a customer or enquiry journey.
- Detail – reports can contain a level of detail that real customers would never take the time to provide.
- Clarity and certainty – reports can contain answer very specific questions and provide irrefutable evidence (e.g. photographic, audio, video).
Mystery Shopping can deliver on all of these qualities in a way that is impossible through feedback from real customers.
In-moment feedback represents a huge step forward in overcoming the friction that generally limits the amount of feedback that real customers will provide: it makes it quick and easy for them to provide feedback at the very moment that impressions are being formed and observations are being made.
It provides high volumes of “small packet” data at multiple touchpoints, which can form a reliable overall picture and provide instant notification of issues so that these can be dealt with rapidly.
But even considering the ease and convenience of in-moment feedback, it is likely that areas of mere mediocrity (and “meh moments”) will be under-represented in any feedback system relying purely on feedback from real customers.
People are generally tired of being asked to provide feedback unless or until they are either very pleased or disappointed. If neither of those things apply, and if they are going to give feedback, most customers will want to do it as quickly as possible. Everyone is short of time.
Often, the people whose opinions are most worth seeking are the most time-poor. If they are forcing themselves to find time to provide feedback, it is most likely to be when they’re driven by strong feelings (maybe for positive reasons, and maybe not).
Another consideration is your reputation and the need to protect it.
How do you get the lessons from online reviews but try to limit damage to your reputation?
While there has never been a better time for B2C businesses to obtain valuable feedback from real customers, there are clear limitations as well as challenges:
- Feedback tends to be brief and limited, lacking clarity and detail.
- Feedback will tend to focus on (and be limited to) what stood out to people, and people have different hot buttons and priorities. Suppose you have “opportunities to improve” (weaknesses) in an area that is only a priority for a minority of your customers. In that case, you might not hear about it publicly for quite some time (but in the meantime, this issue may have added to the mediocre impressions formed by many customers).
- Where feedback from online customer reviews can and will provide you with opportunities to learn and improve, any review that is less than glowing comes at a (reputational) cost.
Mystery Shopping is a different sort of tool.
Mystery shopping is very different from all forms of real customer feedback. It can be (and usually is) much fuller in scope, more thorough, focused, and immediate, providing clear insights that are often easier to act upon quickly, confidently and effectively.
It provides businesses with detail that is impossible to obtain through other means, and it can provide extremely comprehensive feedback, covering every aspect and/or stage of the customer journey.
Unlike “real” customers with individual bugbears or blindspots, the Mystery Shopper is typically tasked with fully and impartially reporting on various aspects, stages and steps. A Mystery Shopping report often provides a comprehensive view of a complete customer journey.
We may be biased, but we believe that with its significant and unique advantages, Mystery Shopping should form at least some part of the feedback approach for all B2C businesses.
That being said, to get full value from Mystery Shopping, you must work with the right partner. How do you choose the right partner? This video highlights some of the main reasons you should consider working with Customerwise. But after you have watched the video, do keep reading, because here at Customerwise, we add something unique to our Mystery Shopping services…
A uniquely powerful approach: a combination of in-moment customer feedback and in-depth Mystery Shopping feedback
Mystery Shopping has unique advantages, but it also has limitations. It would never make sense for any business to rely on Mystery Shopping as its sole source of feedback. One significant limitation is the volume of available data.
Due to costs and simple practicalities, there are clear limitations on the volume and frequency of mystery shopping interactions that can be carried out. These will always be very small numbers compared to the number of real customer interactions (and, of course, it is those real customer interactions that are the whole point).
With such a small relative sample size, there’s a very real risk that any single Mystery Shopping interaction will see things happening that are very unusual and things not happening that are very common.
Mystery Shopping provides a clear view into a “snapshot in time”. Things might be very different at other times, or at most other times.
The key challenge for every b2C business is surely obtaining enough regular high-quality feedback to help them ensure that what they do and – how they do it – consistently reflects and yet exceeds what their real customers want.
Mystery Shopping provides incredible levels of detail and clarity regarding specific moments, but what about all those other days and times? Although you can’t receive ultra-detailed Mystery Shopping reports constantly, it is crucial to have a regular or constant flow of feedback so you know if your performance is consistent (and if it isn’t).
In our view, the most sensible approach for B2C businesses is to use Mystery Shopping in combination with truly effective feedback collection from real customers and strong online engagement.
In-moment customer feedback
When it comes to obtaining feedback from real customers, where, when, and how you ask for it can make a huge difference to your success rate.
That’s why we provide clients with a range of in-moment feedback solutions along with Mystery Shopping solutions. These solutions include eye-catching physical feedback terminals and other tools to trigger feedback, including QR codes and NFC technology.
We’re the only UK Mystery Shopping provider with access to this technology. This pairing of regular, high-volume feedback from real customers and in-depth feedback from Mystery Shopping is truly a “killer combination.”
If your business could benefit from more high-quality feedback to help you improve customer experiences, give us a call for an initial no-obligation chat.
