What are the possible loses controlled through Mystery shopping ?

Mystery Shopping in Retail store

What are the possible loses controlled through Mystery shopping?

In order to find out where your brand is lacking, you have to find out what your competitor(s) is having. How can you do that? You cannot steal into their business strategies, after all. Jokes apart! Why steal, when you can shop, ‘Mystery Shop’ and experience them real-time?

You spend X and get 3X in return – A profitable deal indeed!

Many business owners don’t consider mystery shopping at all as they think it would be expensive. They fail to understand that a properly executed mystery shopping program pays out for itself by providing good ROI (Return on Investments). If spending an X amount on something helps you get 3X in return, you should not let such offers go.

Moreover, mystery shopping also helps you keep a check on the possible losses your business might come across. Take a look -

Manpower loss – Employee theft, improper stock keeping, under counting the products, customer theft (especially related to trail rooms) are some of the common examples illustrating a gap between you and your employees.With the help of mystery shopping, you would be able to find out training gaps and take quick actions to increase the stability of your employees and alleviate such issues to a great extent.  Well-trained staff members and their enhanced performances increase the level of mutual trust between the employee and employer. It ultimately reduces the rate of attrition.

Customer loss – Your customer might be leaving your brand for a number of reasons like poor service, bad reviews from your existing customers, biased customer services, product disappointments and competitive issues.

For example - at an automobile shop, it is very important to understand whether a customer needs solution based selling or feature based selling. If a customer is asking about the technicalities of a product, like ground clearance, 2-wheel or 4-wheel drive, etc. your store associates should handle him/her accordingly, not the other way round.

 Mystery shopping can help you know the main reasons behind customer loss.

Brand credibility loss – Perceptions of your customers towards your products do change from time to time. If you are able to understand it before it’s too late, you are safe and if not, you are more likely to suffer from brand credibility loss in the coming future.

Let’s take a look at the evolution of carbonated drinks according to the change in taste of the customers. Earlier it was used to be all soda and sugar thing because people liked both fizz and sweetness. Gradually, they realized that too much of sugar won’t fetch them sweet results. So, they started looking for something fizzy, but not sugary, then came the diet avatars of the carbonate beverages. And, now those cold drink brands are also selling packaged drinking water with essential minerals in it because it is what most customers want.

So, whether your brand will stay or say goodbye depends on whether you are able to go with the flow or not. Deploying a dignified mystery shopping service provider like HS Brands can help you understand “What your customers are looking for and what’s trending?” Rest you are wise enough!