Walk-in Customer Insights vs. Mystery Customer Insights – Which One Brings More Competitive Edge

Mystery Shopper Insights Vs Customer Insights

Are you a brand trying hard to fathom out how good you’re doing? In order to comprehend it, you have to understand what your customers think about you in the first place. Yes, understanding how your ‘Customers’ see your business is more important than how ‘You’ see your business.  Once you get to see through the ‘eyes’ of your ‘customers’, mystery customers, to be precise, you can translate those insights into developing solid business ideas and grip in the market, thus attracting profitable growth. 

As far as customer insights are concerned, there are a number of ways you can collect them, like, feedback machines and forms at point of sales, FGD (Focus Group Discussion) and exit interviews. However, are these effective all the time? This is why, banking upon mystery shopping makes a lot of sense here.

Let’s take an example - 

When a customer visits a restaurant, he or she is more likely to judge the services on certain limited parameters like the taste of the food, service, ambiance and value for money, right? He or she might not notice the sub-parameters within. The reason - he or she is there just to have food and not scrutiny the services offered. It’s a common human tendency. And, quite obviously, a walk-in customer’s feedback is more likely to come, when he or she is either very happy with the quality of food you served or the services you rendered or is really annoyed and disappointed.

Therefore, you might not get a proper insight into how a customer really feels about you just on the basis of your walk-in customer’s opinions. This is where mystery shopping services from a leading company like HS Brands come into play. In comparison to a walk-in customer’s insights, a mystery shopper’s insights are much more detailed because a mystery shopper drills it down more in a given setting or situation and comes up with objective feedback. So, let’s take a look at the advantages of checking with a mystery shopper’s insights over a walk-in customer’s –

•  A mystery shopper is more bound to give objective feedback in line with the brand standards because he or she already has the vision about the brand he or she is auditing.

•  Walk-in customers might miss out on minute details, but a mystery shopper has a pre-planned eye for detail. So, he or she will also look into the matters that are trivial for walk-in customers. For example – a regular can tell you about how the food tasted, but is less likely to notice the crockery used. But, a mystery shopper will dig deep into the minute things, as well because he or she is trained that way.

•  A mystery shopper’s insights will help you work on customer aspirations and not only on what they need and expect from you. And, needless to mention, but competitive edge comes when you know customer aspirations. 

•  A walk-in customer at a premium automobile dealership might not even notice, if or not premium cutlery was used while serving refreshments, which is a brand standard. However, a mystery shopper is bound to notice that.

•   The perks of mystery shopping don’t end here. With mystery shopping, you can also compare your services and the level of customer satisfaction you offer with your competitors, which indeed is an added advantage to you. Quite obviously, you can’t ask a walk-in customer to sneak-peek into what your competitors are doing? 

Hopefully, the above mentioned pointers are enough to help you understand that how a mystery shopper’s insights are more relevant and to-the-point than that of a regular customer’s.  And, how the former helps you get more competitive edge to your business. 

So, why wait, HS Brands is a phone call away!