Mystery Shopping Gives Professional Feedback

Many restaurants, coffee shops, wine storage shops and retail establishments offer their patrons customer comment cards as a way to leave feedback. Whether the customers experience was exceptionally good or terribly bad, they can fill out a comment card and let the establishment know what their experience was like. Now, to be truthful, the comment cards may not always end up in the hands of management, especially if the feed back is not necessarily positive. Often the cards are simply overlooked, and so while the customer feels like they have done their part in responding to poor service with constructive criticism, nothing actually ever comes of it, unless the card is handed directly to management. Anyone in the restaurant or retail business knows that there will sometimes be negative feedback from customers. It is part of the business of pleasing people. However, consistent negative feedback, complaints, or worse, lack of repeat business denotes something more serious that should be immediately addressed.

Luckily, there are options. Many businesses use a mystery shopping service to regularly monitor the customer relations and guest service that is being provided. In doing so, the management receives regular, detailed reports of the entire customer experience, from the moment they walk into the establishment until the time that they leave. With a mystery shopping service , evaluators enter the establishment without the knowledge of any of the staff or management that work there. These evaluators pose as regular customers on a random day. They record their impressions of the atmosphere, how long it takes for them to be assisted, their impressions of the employees and staff, the quality of the food that was served, or the product that was provided. With a keen sense of awareness, they record, first mentally, and later physically, their interpretations and also how a customer might view such interactions.

Most of the time the observation goes completely unnoticed by staff and management until the report is received. Often, the employee who was evaluated has no memory of who the observer could have been. The mystery shopping service insures that its evaluators are professional, detail oriented and specifically trained. In the case of a very poor evaluation, management will often turn the evaluation into a basis for a more thorough employee training course. The great thing about these hidden evaluations is that no one else need know who performed poorly, other than management and the observed employee himself, should he be told about the evaluation at a later date.

Training is one of the most crucial aspects when it comes to staffing a business with happy, competent, customer oriented individuals who understand the importance of each interaction. It is one thing to adequately trained employees once, but quite another to be able to sustain that use of information throughout the months or years. Constant re-evaluation is needed. A mystery shopping service gives employers the information that they need to determine where the shortcomings are, and that knowledge carries them through to implementing new training strategies and programs designed to keep employees tuned in and interested in providing customer service and satisfaction at the level the company desires. The use of a mystery shopping service has gone from a rare, perhaps only an annual event, to a much more frequent, fairly consistent tool for businesses that forms the crux of all guest relations trainings.

Westminster Self Storage

Glastonbury Self Storage

Tweet This Post 

Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

View Staff's Profile      Subscribe via RSS