The Secret Shopper – is your brand differentiating and delighting?

In the beginning of my career as a research executive, 25 + years ago, I became a seasoned mystery shopper for our client, the SPAR Group, and their 750 retail stores. Fast track 25 + years and mystery shopping or secret shopping is still very much an important observational research tool to improve the customer experience.

 It is an important measure to see if a brand is indeed delivering on their brand promises. Back then, we were just operating in a bricks and mortar environment, but today, a mystery shopping program should be deployed across any customer channel: in-store, telephone (retail location or contact centre), and across online and mobile touchpoints (website, inapp, email, etc.). Back then all stores were regularly audited and feedback given to the store managers as a way of staying ahead of their competition.

 A secret shopper or mystery shopper program is a powerful research tool to evaluate if the service design has delivered the desires of customers. It is effective because it unobtrusive when the shopper takes on the role of the customer observing the staff. The staff has very little opportunity to identify ‘real’ customers and those who are paid to observe their performance. The value extracted is the data captured during the moments of direct and indirect interactions between staff and customers.

At OYA, we practice effective techniques to ensure the value out of the data collected is ready to add value to marketing strategies and take the following approach:

· Having a clear set of objectives to ensure that you are bringing it back to your overall organisational strategy. A few examples include: brand promises made to the customer or compliance to a set of instore standards such as point of sale or customer service.

· Ensure your sampling plan is linked back to your strategic objectives. A current mystery shopper program we are devising for a retail client includes leveraging sales data to inform our sample selection of the highest and lowest performing stores to measure what is being done well and to monitor what is not. This feedback will be used to leverage how we can improve the underperforming stores and to inform staff training, point of sale and customer experience programs.

· Use existing research or customer feedback to design your program. With reference to a current client, we have leveraged the clients U&A study (Usage and Attitudes). This study highlighted a distinct set of ‘differentiators and delighters’. These are now part of improving the mystery shopper design.

· Consider your customer profiles. We used the client’s segmentation study as a starting point for who the secret shopper will be role-playing in the mystery shop.  We designed a scenario based on our customer persona ‘s needs, wants and motivations.

·  To aid shopper recall, the survey should be as short as possible (less than 30 questions is ideal) and always tied to the objectives you developed at the outset of the program. Consider how you will be capturing the information to ensure this happens.  Our chosen method is a short questionnaire using a questionnaire link on the mystery shopper’s mobile phones to capture the information.

 These techniques are not only applicable in a shopping environment alone but can also be applied in various settings because it is an ethnographic research approach.

Say hello via email if you’d like to know more about how to design a mystery shopper program for your brand.