Service marketing agencies use mystery shopping to improve their customer experience

How full-service Marketing Agencies use mystery shopping to improve their customer experience

Marketing Agencies ensure that every aspect of their own online presence is running smoothly using mystery shoppers. Agencies showcase the quality of their services and creative capabilities through various customer- facing channels. If the Marketing Agency can successfully demonstrate their seamless and personalised customer experience, companies looking for these professional services will be able to see that the agency are fully capable of providing them with the same high level package. Marketing Agencies also utilise mystery shopping and offer it as an add-on to their service offering.

5 ways Marketing Agencies use mystery shopping to assess their own customer experience 12345 Assess customer- Assess Monitor competitors: Monitor Customer Mystery shop event facing channels: communications: Satisfaction: marketing: Marketing Agencies use mystery Marketing Agencies use mystery Mystery shoppers presenting as shopping providers to monitor Marketing Agencies hire Market For Marketing Agencies who shoppers to carry out mobile genuine customers who require their competitors service Research or Mystery Shopping provide their clients with brand and desktop customer facing the services of a Marketing offering, pricing, marketing and providers to ask existing clients ambassadors at trade shows, assessments. These are a cost- Agency, make telephone, live promotions. questions about their exhibitions, corporate events or effective method of ensuring chat, email and social media experience. pop-up shops, mystery that the website, advertising, enquiries and assess every shoppers assess the interactions search marketing and social interaction, providing the that these representatives are media presence is having the marketing agency with insight having with potential intended impact. into what the experience is like. customers.

1Assess customer facing channels Certified mystery shoppers visit and assess websites 38% with specific objectives in mind, for example: Usability – does each link work? Accessibility – font sizes and colours Navigation - can information be found easily? Their interactions are recorded using webcam and of people will stop engaging with screen recording so that Marketing Agencies can see a website if the content/layout is exactly what their customer’s experience looks like. unattractive. Source: Curatti Subjective feedback can also be gathered in the form of interviews and can provide useful insight, for example opinions about the style or content. Watch a website assessment here. In addition, mystery shoppers can assess the quality, visibility and consistency of marketing campaigns including email marketing, search engine listings, advertising and social media presence.

Assess communications 2 A simple and low-cost method of assessing Audio recordings from the experience that clients have when they telephone calls made to make contact with a Marketing Agency, is to contact centres, can be used hire mystery shoppers who will present in training programmes, to themselves as genuine customers and make demonstrate quality enquiries. Marketing Agencies nominate the customer service. channels that they would like to monitor, for example the live chat facility on the website, social media enquiry handling or contact centre responses and mystery shoppers interact with the advisors. Telephone calls with a contact centre can be recorded, and made available so that employee interactions can be evaluated and recordings can be used for training. Many mystery shoppers own their own businesses, so can effortlessly play the part of genuine customers and pass through the natural stages of the customer journey, assessing each and providing valuable insight.

Monitor competitors 3 To stay ahead of competitors, Marketing Agencies use market research and mystery shopping providers to carry out competitor monitoring. These providers carry out in-depth assessments of competitor service offering, pricing models and promotional materials. Competitor monitoring through mystery shopping can help to increase sales staff performance by 21% During an ongoing mystery shopping programme which assessed the customer experience and sales skills of staff members working in department stores, a fragrance and beauty company were able to identify that they were being significantly outperformed when it came to the initial contact with the sales staff. When the results came in that only 67% of staff were acknowledging customers with a greeting or smile compared to 100% of their competitor’s staff, the company implemented training and the score has already risen to 88%.

Monitor Customer Satisfaction 4 Customer satisfaction programmes are a great way of finding out how a client found the Marketing Agency’s services, from discovering the company, initial meeting, to the delivery of the final product. Types of Customer Satisfaction collection: • Customer Satisfaction Calls and Exit Interviews Mystery shopping providers have a higher success rate than an internal programme might, as the dedicated team will have the means to continuously reach out to clients until the target number of responses is reached, resulting in the data being fully representable. • Paper-Based Surveys and Instant Web Response Link Using an agency will often be a lower cost option than many in-house alternatives, for example web links to a survey on the back of receipts with incentives can be expensive to launch and manage, whereas an agency will already have the systems in place to implement this. Examples of customer satisfaction questions: o Did the quality of the product you received meet your initial expectation? o Would you recommend this Marketing Agency to another business?

Mystery shop event marketing - Case Study 5 The Brief: Methodology A direct Marketing Agency based in London wanted to measure the customer 1. Before the visit, shoppers were provided with scenarios to follow to ensure experience of client’s potential subscribers when being approached by their that they behaved as a typical subscriber would. sales staff at exhibitions as well as the fulfilment experience at the delivery 2. Monthly visits took place, with half being video recorded to capture the stage. interaction. 3. After each face to face assignment the shoppers completed an online Mystery Shoppers Ltd designed a programme to assess this for three of the assessment form detailing their experience. agency’s clients including an energy supplier, a recipe box supplier and a food 4. The shoppers documented all communication with the company, including delivery service. screenshots and emails. 5. When the deliveries arrived, shoppers took photos of them and completed Each assessment was catered towards the agency’s end client and the typical their assignments. subscription process that a customer would go through, including: Objectives achieved: • Initial impressions of the of the exhibitions stand • Initial contact and rapport building The assessment forms were quality checked and made available on the client’s • Needs discovery online portal for review. The mystery shopping insights have shown that in the • Product offering, prices and tailored benefits most recent wave of mystery shopping, exhibition staff were 37.5% more likely • Objection handling and sale close to mention the benefits of the products to customers, than they were at the • Delivery beginning of the programme. • Product review In addition, as part of the sales procedure, exhibition staff were required to ask potential subscribers a set of questions to find out more about their home life and in the most recent wave of mystery shopping visits, all did so.

In addition, Marketing Agencies utilise mystery shopping as an add-on to their service offering 1 2 3 Focus groups: Testing each element of the Offering Mystery Shopping as a package before launching to product: When working with a new client, clients: agencies may use focus groups during Marketing agencies are frequently asked if the analysis and research stage to help Mystery shopping can also be built in to the they offer a mystery shopping or market determine the direction to go in with full-service offering as a method of testing research service and mystery shopping regard to branding and design. Mystery out the marketing package before it goes live providers make great partners. shopping providers will often be able to to the client, and on a on-going, periodic facilitate this and deliver results. basis.

Focus Groups 1 Because mystery shopping providers Focus groups allow participants to already have a large database of expand and develop points raised, shoppers, often nationwide and resulting in detailed feedback, sometimes globally, it is possible to which is useful for both business quickly facilitate focus groups. and project development. The focus group would be directed by a trained moderator, who would be able to steer the discussions to ensure that participants cover all of the objectives outlined by the client. Because mystery shopping providers are already set up to do so, they are able to audio and/or video record the focus group discussions, analyse data and deliver the results to the Marketing Agency.

2Testing each element of the package before launching to clients To ensure that the finished product is This ensures that Marketing perfect before it goes to the client, Agencies are giving their Marketing Agencies often hire mystery clients the best possible shoppers who audit and test each product, resulting in very aspect of the package against a satisfied clients. checklist. Not only is this often cheaper than using valuable in-house resources, external assessors are often able to highlight issues that a designer or programmer might not have anticipated.

3Offering Mystery Shopping as a Product Marketing Agencies often partner with When a client requests mystery mystery shopping and market research shopping or market research, MRS providers, who run programmes on (Market Research Society) and their behalf either before, after or MSPA (Mystery Shopping during a marketing campaign or simply Professionals Association) as an add-on service to help them to accredited companies provide the gain insight on behalf of their client. highest quality service. Having an agency carry out this research instead of attempting it in house allows Marketing Agencies to free up their valuables resources. The mystery shopping or market research agency will already have shoppers and researchers in place to carry out research of this kind and can provide a timely and low-cost service. These providers are also able to white label results with the marketing company’s branding.

Mystery Shoppers Ltd. Mystery Shoppers Ltd is dedicated to providing mystery shopping services and customer satisfaction research to businesses of all sizes and within any industry. Mystery Shopping is hugely versatile and can be used to gain insight into customer experience; staff performance; compliance monitoring and competitor intelligence. As well as being the diagnostic tool, mystery shopping is often also the solution – a periodic ongoing programme can quickly improve the overall business performance and increase sales, customer service levels and ensure ongoing compliance. With over 28 years’ experience, Mystery Shoppers Ltd has grown one of the biggest panels of mystery shoppers in the UK with over 260,000 with 70,000 engaging in assignments over the last 18 months. www.mystery-shoppers.co.uk © Mystery Shoppers Ltd. 2019 In Partnership with: