About Mystery Shopping

Businesses are increasingly seeing each customer not in terms of the value of a single transaction but in terms of the value of that customer's business over a lifetime. It is also generally recognised that it is far, far cheaper to retain existing customers than to attract new ones.

Many companies use customer feedback forms to keep them in touch with their customers' views but these can be unreliable - as few as one dissatisfied customer in 10 bothers to complain.

The tangible elements of customer service such as delivery-as-promised aren't too difficult to measure. It's the intangible elements which are more tricky - but it's these which are most important to your customers. Elements such as:

How the service they received compared with the service they expected.
How much they trust you and your product.
How your customer service compares with that of your competitors.
How much loyalty they feel towards you as a result of their last transaction.
How much they feel you value them as a customer.
How much they feel they are treated like an individual person.

Meeting your objectives

While most programmes are about measuring customer service, there are a range of other possible objectives including:

Compliance - are your staff complying with legal requirements?
Security - are your staff being honest about using the till, giving receipts, not pocketing cash, etc?
Standards - are your staff following company laid-down standards and procedures?
Incentives - we can help you identify staff who deserve a reward.
Competitor Monitor - we can benchmark you against competitors - by service, by price or both (within Market Research Society guidelines)
Benchmarking - we can benchmark your service against best-of-breed companies in their industries.
Training Needs Analysis - identifying weaknesses in the service chain which indicate a training need, and confirm afterwards how effective the training has been.
Continuous Improvement - we have techniques which provide you with an ideal basis for helping every branch or every staff member to strive towards excellence.

Retail, Travel and Home

Retail: Our agents visit your shop, pub, restaurant, bank branch, garage or other premises. They may or may not purchase, depending on how essential that is to achieving your objectives. Or they belong to your club and report back on how it feels to be a member.

Travel: Our agents travel on your trains, planes, ships, buses, coaches etc. or our agents go on one of your holidays and tell you about their experience.

Home: Our agents order goods for delivery at their home and let you know when those goods arrive, in what condition and whether they were correct as ordered or they ask you to deliver a service at their homes and tell you how well your staff did the job.

Telephone and Internet

Telephone - Outbound: Our agents make calls pretending to be customers and report back on how the call was handled. They can test all your telephone lines, your call centre, and your email response, as well as your web site. We can provide sample tapes or a tape of every call to help you coach staff towards excellence.

Telephone - Inbound: We can also provide an inbound call service to monitor your outbound Call Centre activity. Our agents will answer as if private individuals or businesses as required.

Internet: Internet sites which offer a response facility have acquired a poor reputation - it often seems that response forms disappear forever into the ether. We can monitor your site giving you feedback on usability and functionality, and how quickly and reliably our enquiries receive a response from your company. We have a panel of home internet users who carry out this service using a variety of different email addresses.

Business-to-Business: We can usually find ways of simulating a business calling your lines, though you may need to help us generate realistic scenarios. We relish a real challenge!

Customer Satisfaction Research

We can interview your customers by telephone, or on site. We can tell you what they think of your service and what they would like you to change or improve. We can find out why former customers switched to a competitor or whether current customers might consider doing so and why - and what they say you can do to ensure they don't!

Paper-based Surveys

We can run your paper-based customer surveys such as comment cards and postal surveys, providing a data entry service with periodic summary reports. We can provide feedback sheets for delegates at your conferences, validation and evaluation forms and reports for trainees on your courses and employee opinion surveys to keep you abreast of the thoughts and feelings of your staff.

Phone: +371 29662955