If you want to improve the service to your customers, there is nothing like taking your place. Wear the Sherlock Holmes trench coat and find out how shoppers are treated at your company.
Most entrepreneurs are convinced of the importance of serving their clients well and have a genuine interest in improving the service they provide; however, when designing actions to improve their care, they run into a conflict: they don't know where to start.
The first suggestion is to measure the service - evaluate the quality - that is offered to consumers. This, for two reasons:
If it is not measured, it can hardly be improved (so say the great gurus of quality and administration).
To identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company. Often times, small entrepreneurs try to serve customers very well but often do not know exactly what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.
Probably what you consider captivates your customers, they do not even care.
What you do, and what your buyers love, may be instinctive rather than planned.
If what you want is to create a controlled and reproducible system that guarantees the satisfaction and, therefore, the loyalty of your customers, you have to start measuring the quality of the service you provide.
For businesses that serve a significant number of customers, such as a clothing store, restaurant, pharmacy, cell phone dealer, etc. There is a very efficient way to measure your service: the mystery shopper method.
Incognito
It is a technique that consists of a person acting as a client of a certain company, in order to know and qualify the service that most real buyers receive.
This mystery shopper (also called anonymous or incognito user) evaluates the attention he receives from the staff, the speed of the service, the empathy of the staff, his service attitude, the knowledge of the person who attends him. The display of products, prices, sales policies, payment conditions, and even the cleaning of the facilities.
In this way, the owner will know what is really happening in his organization from the point of view of his client.
But it is very likely that the interested party cannot pose as a customer, especially if all his employees know him. In this case, he can perform this task through friends, family or acquaintances; You can even hire specialized agents or companies that offer these services.
Prepare the way
Once you have decided on this method to evaluate the quality of service to your customers, take the following points into account.
Discretion. The idea of buying from your company is to measure the service your real customers receive. Don't be tempted to tell employees that these actions are taking place because the spirit is misunderstood.
Some co-workers, hearing about mystery shoppers, try to guess who the person is playing this role and modify their attention habits. This, in addition to altering the results, could affect the real clientele. How uncomfortable it must be for a salesperson to exaggerate their attention just to feel valued.
Look for solutions, not guilty. Take into account the information you receive to find actions that solve the problems found. Blaming people for the results and berating them is not the solution. Turn the information you receive into action: Are the staff not familiar with your products? Organize training campaigns.
Spot areas of opportunity and take advantage of them.
Be consistent. Taking measurements as a mystery shopper is very helpful, but for best results, do the activity frequently. Visiting one or more visits every six months will not work as well as a few, but more frequently. This will also allow you to measure the results of the measurements you apply.
Step by Step
To carry out these service measurement actions and make them useful, follow the recommendations below.
a) Make a visit plan. Establish exactly the day and time each visit should take place. In your plan, schedule periods or cycles of visits, and then follow up and compare based on these periods.
b) Measure as many variables as possible. If you are going to make five visits a month, do not do them at the same time and day because you will probably only evaluate the same person. Better measure the service with different perspectives, such as:
Personal. Try to get an assessment of all (or as many as possible) of the people who serve customers in your business.
Seasons. Try to measure the service offered during peak business hours and also during quieter hours. To have a comprehensive vision of the service.
Shifts. Visit your company in the different staff shifts (if any) to notice which shift has the most deficiencies.
Visit your business also on the day that the manager, the boss or whoever is in charge of the personnel control is not there. Observe how unsupervised workers perform.
C) Follow-up. I compared the results of each visit period, taking into account the following ideas:
Are the proposed actions applied? After your first visitation period, actions will be implemented to solve some problems. Check in your next visitation period that they are taking place.
Do the proposed actions work? When visiting again, you will check if the measures taken are being carried out, but it will be necessary to verify if they improve the service or not.
Are effective actions maintained? Verify that the improvement measures they adopted continue to apply.
Was the new experience more pleasant? If there are no improvements after three or four visits and despite the fact that the proposed solutions are carried out, the solutions devised are not suitable and it is necessary to devise new ones.
Have patience
After concluding your visit period, analyze the results to know the performance and take actions, either to continue the correct delivery of the service or to correct the actions that do not ensure that the client is satisfied.
It is not advisable to evaluate results before concluding the visit period for the following reasons:
- A few visits do not allow a glimpse of the magnitude of the problem or the good service. The healthiest and most appropriate thing is to implement deep improvement actions and with all the staff. If you rush with the first results, you can make the wrong decisions - ideally, the improvement actions should all be taken at the same time. Taking an action with each visit can confuse staff and take longer for results to arrive.
Evaluate the results
There may be several criteria to evaluate the result of these actions, although here we will mention those that are applicable and most useful for most businesses.
Remember that the scoring range was one to seven points. If your average is 5.4, for example, you will notice that the experience - in the opinion of the mystery shopper - was between good and very good. But if the average was 3.5, the evaluation shows that the service was between fair and bad.
Overall average per visit. Add up all the numerical evaluations for each question and find the average. This will give you an overview of the range of each visit.
General average per visit cycle. Add the evaluations of the visits of each stage to know the general average of the entire cycle.
This way you will know if it was positive or negative, and it will serve in the future to compare if there are improvements from the customer's point of view.
General perception of the client. To measure it, they should only consider questions 33 and 34, since they represent the final impression of the buyer.
Take improvement actions
Since you know the magnitude of the problem and have defined it within the critical, potential, opportunity for improvement and sustainability parameters (see the box for comparing results), you must take actions and set objectives to solve the problems encountered.
To do this, follow the steps below:
A) Calculate averages by indicator
Tangibles (question 1-6)
Staff skills (7-21)
Employee attitude (22-23)
Compliance (24-29)
Find which one obtained the lowest score to start the improvement in that area.
If all were similar, start the improvements with the most important indicator for the client (Compliance and Attitude).
Identify the questions with the lowest evaluation of the indicator in question, because they indicate where to start with the improvement actions.
For example, if the indicator with the least evaluation was compliance, with an average of 3.76, and you find that the worst evaluated question by mystery shoppers is 'Did you receive the product or service on time?', You will be facing the most critical action and important to correct.
B) Upcoming visits.
In the following visit cycles - in addition to analyzing these questions again -, evaluate if the determined actions are carried out to correct the failures, and if they work or not.
Also compare the averages of each visit cycle to see if there are improvements against previous periods or not.
It may happen that you identify some aspects that are important to evaluate in addition to those suggested. Just add them to the questionnaire and review them from your next visit.
With this simple comparison method you will notice how critical your service problem is. You will also find an easy way to identify areas of opportunity to raise the level of customer satisfaction.
Although your clients consider that they offer very good services, you will be able to notice, in the evaluations of each question, those actions that can help you to provide the best service in your industry. This will generate many additional sales with the same customers and with new customers.
If you are already convinced of the importance of each of your customers and you want to improve the service you offer them, make purchases at your own store. The mystery customer will help you solve the riddles of your service. Your effort will be reflected in increased sales volume and a satisfied smile on your face and that of your customer.
