For the vast majority of businesses, the customer is the key to sustainability and profitability. Putting the customer first leads to better experiences for both the business and the consumer. If the customer of a business has a positive experience, this leads to various significant benefits – repeat business, word of mouth recommendations and ultimately bringing more money into the business. A company can offer all the products, add-ons, bonuses and extras they want, but if the service at the base level of the business is lacklustre, the profit will follow suit. Ensuring not just an acceptable level of customer service is being provided by your business, but a great one, is one of the largest factors in a business’s success today. It cannot be understated how important ensuring fantastic customer service is, especially when illustrated by the following statistics:

• In a Walker Study, it was discovered that 86% of customers surveyed would pay more for a good customer service experience.
• In the US, $62 billion is lost every year due to poor customer service.
• On average, consumers are far more likely to talk about negative experiences rather than positive ones – a 15 to 11 ratio in the US.
• 51% of consumers will cease business with a company after one bad experience.
• An increase in customer retention of just 5% can increase profitability by 25-95%.

A good customer experience has a knock on effect for a business. Customer retention, customer satisfaction and the ability to upsell and cross-sell are all benefits of a great customer service experience that positively affect each other, ultimately increasing your bottom line.

Many businesses understand how important customer service is but don’t take adequate steps to monitor the customer service experience. The most common form of internal reviews on customer service are anonymous customer surveys. These surveys are a good starting point but tend to fail at sufficiently assessing customer service. As mentioned, customers are far more likely to talk only about negative experiences. A customer is always going to be more inclined to leave a review for bad customer service or complain about bad customer service than they are about average to good customer service. Any slightly negative experience will be reviewed as such with only a handful of customers going out of their way to recognise great customer service. If the surveys are for vouchers or points in return, a customer may not answer the survey accurately, treating it as merely a means to a benefit for themselves. Either way, most internal forms of customer service assessment are skewed and do not accurately represent the customer perception of your business.

This is where mystery shopping can help you.

How Can Mystery Shopping Help You?

Mystery shopping is a form of market research whereby a shopper is instructed by the company being assessed or by a third party market research company to assess the many facets of the customer experience of a business. This can include simple shop floor customer service but can extend to regulation compliance, complaints processes, online and phone inquiry experiences and many more essential aspects of the face of a business.

At Customer Care we aim to make this process as simple as possible for businesses. Customer Care employs shoppers to undertake any aspects of customer service you may wish to assess in your business. While we have an extremely hands on approach to assisting businesses with their customer service needs, all of our clients need only provide us with instructions and await the results. We take care of all of the assessments, surveys and intricacies of the mystery shopping process and provide you with the outcomes. There are no set up fees, no reporting costs and no contracts for you. We make this process take as little time and stress as possible so you can continue to run your business as effectively as possible. With Customer Care you can experience all of the benefits of fast, effective and accurate market research without any of the hassle.

If your business wants an advantage in the market, Customer Care can provide the most cost effective, efficient and accurate methods possible. Whether it be competitor analysis, compliance auditing or merely just mystery shopping, Customer Care can help you. We are a market research company that recognises the rapidly changing environment of business and we are flexible around your needs. In today’s changing business landscape, your competitors may be a click or a store away, ensure you have an edge on your competitors and watch your business grow.

Mystery Shopping Process - Simple & Easy

At Customer Care we believe that the process of Mystery Shopping/Secret Shopping should be easy for businesses to set up.  For this reason, we do not require any contracts, charge set up fees or charge for reporting.  The ONLY cost to the client is the cost of the visit/online survey.

The steps are:

• Develop questionnaire - FREE 
• Set up dates/times that you would like the shopper to visit or phone
• Set up the enquiry for the shopper to use
• Mystery Shopper will complete visit/phone call and complete online report
• This report will be checked by our Quality Assurance Team
• The client will receive a pdf via email of the completed survey
• The client will also have a portal set up for them on our site and will have access to view reporting etc

Or view the following graphic:

Mystery Shopping At Customer Care

So many people think of Mystery Shopping as a negative tool where they believe Mystery Shoppers are only looking to criticise.  This cannot be further from the truth, at Customer Care we see reports come through which identify staff that are outstanding and deserve recognition and a 'pat on the back' from their employer. 

For the staff that do not perform well, Mystery Shopping is a valuable tool to identify training needs to ensure top results are achieved.