Running a robust customer experience (CX) evaluation program starts with a solid mystery shopper application. In order for a business to grow—and succeed—it’s important to curate, manage, and optimize an effective customer journey across all touchpoints and locations. It takes a team of skilled mystery shoppers to accomplish this task. Thus, generating a quality application for attracting and identifying top candidates is an essential first step.
This article will examine the purpose and importance of regular CX evaluations, as well as the key components of any quality mystery shopping application. It will also include an example template, plus a few common pitfalls to avoid. Then, we’ll explore why outsourcing to an expert CX partner like IntelliShop is a powerful and cost-effective alternative to an internal CX evaluation program.
Why Mystery Shopping Matters for Businesses
Mystery shopping is a tried-and-true method for evaluating a business’s customer experience for a number of reasons. Because staff members don’t know who the evaluators are, it provides objective insight into daily operations in a way that audits cannot. It also provides data benchmarks and reinforces standardized protocols that can be upheld at various locations and touchpoints. Furthermore, mystery shopping data can be tracked and compared to identify particularly successful initiatives, offerings, and departments.
Perhaps most importantly, a good mystery shopping program can help businesses spot issues early on and make strategic steps to remedy them before they become bigger, costlier problems. And the bigger the business, the harder it is to keep track of all these facets across multiple locations and touchpoints.
Here’s how mystery shoppers can help these companies specifically:
- Maintain Brand Consistency: Ensure every location and touchpoint aligns with brand standards.
- Identify Training Gaps: Help uncover areas where staff members need more support.
- Improve Customer Satisfaction: Gather unbiased feedback on real customer experiences.
- Enhance Operational Efficiency: Reveal bottlenecks and issues in ongoing processes.
- Improve Revenue and Profits: With these benefits combined, a business’s bottom line sees steady increases.
Of course, none of this is possible if hired evaluators aren’t up to the task. Therefore, creating a quality mystery shopper application is absolutely essential to find expert team members who can get the job done well.
Key Components of a Quality Mystery Shopper Application
With all these benefits in mind, creating a strong mystery shopper application can seem like a monumental task. However, there are plenty of best practices that can be followed to maximize hiring efforts. For businesses looking to hire quality CX evaluators for a mystery shopping program, here are some key components to consider including in the application.
Define Clear Goals
Each business has its own missions, goals, and strategies in terms of customer experience. This will inform what kind of evaluators will be a good fit for a mystery shopping program. Therefore, a good first step is to define clear objectives for the program itself, then the mystery shoppers.
For example, take a restaurant chain looking to manage and improve the experience of their diners. They’ll likely want to gauge key performance indicators (KPIs) of quality food service—including wait times, staff knowledgeability, and food quality. This company should make it clear in their mystery shopper application to ensure that potential hires can align with these objectives.
Develop Tailored Questionnaires
In order to find a good match between a business and hopeful CX evaluators, it can be beneficial to include an example of an evaluation form in the mystery shopper application. That way, potential applicants can get a picture of what they’ll be asked to analyze—and how the business wants to receive reports. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions often yields the best data. Include or develop a questionnaire that aligns the task of mystery shopping with the business’s overall goals and objectives.
For example, a business that sells custom-printed t-shirts might want to evaluate their customer service team’s effectiveness over the phone. Therefore, they can create a targeted CX evaluation questionnaire for this specific objective. Then, by including it in their application, they can hire mystery shoppers that are skilled in the required areas and up to the task.
Segment Shopper Profiles
An important aspect of mystery shopping is the “mystery” portion. Thus, businesses should seek to recruit shoppers who match their customer demographics. That way, they can better simulate an authentic interaction with staff members.
For instance, imagine a restaurant company wants to check the quality of their CX at various locations, especially at their steakhouse venue. While possible, it would be better to hire mystery shoppers who aren’t vegan for this job to get better data. Instead, they could send this evaluator to their meat-free cafe.
While this is an extreme scenario, there are other demographics that can benefit from segmentation. For example, age, purchasing habits, and tech-savviness might mean some shoppers will gather higher-quality results for certain mystery shopping tasks than others. Include and request any relevant information in the mystery shopper application to help facilitate this strategy.
Include Scenario-Based Tasks
For even more compatibility, listing scenario-based tasks in the mystery shopper application can be advantageous. Even if not every task is included, it’s often helpful to give a general outline so that potential applicants understand what they might be asked to do.
One option is to create a list of realistic shopping scenarios that might require evaluation. For example, mystery shoppers may need to simulate product inquiries, go through the checkout process, or file an authentic-sounding complaint. Ensure these scenarios reflect common customer journeys for the business that will be evaluated.
Integrate Multi-Channel Evaluation
In order to test the full range of a business’s CX, it’s important to have mystery shoppers for every touchpoint. Consequently, including these factors in a mystery shopper application can improve the likelihood of finding qualified applicants.
These are the primary channels that most businesses will want to evaluate:
- In Person: Mystery shoppers who analyze physical storefronts can take a close look at the cleanliness of each location, staff behavior, and product availability.
- Ecommerce: Check for website usability, accuracy, and intuitiveness with a digital mystery shopper. These shoppers can also evaluate the checkout process and delivery timeliness as applicable.
- Phone: Many customers still call in for a number of reasons—to get answers fast, to request support, or to ask complex or unusual questions. Thus, evaluating over-the-phone CX can be an important task for mystery shoppers.
By leveraging multi-channel CX evaluations, businesses can get a better scope of every facet of their operations. Mystery shoppers who examine these channels should be skilled in these areas—and prepared to engage with them.
Example Mystery Shopper Application
With these practices in mind, let’s take a look at some of the basic elements of a mystery shopper application:
- Personal Information: Provide name, date of birth, and contact information.
- Availability & Preferences: Ask what types of evaluations the applicants prefer—for example, how far are they willing to travel? What days and time frames are they available to work?
- Experience & Qualifications: Prompt applicants to share if they have prior experience in mystery shopping or another relevant, related field.
- Technology Proficiency: Check that applicants have required skills, like email communication, and access to technology and a reliable internet connection as needed.
- Situational Questions: Include relevant questions to assess compatibility based on tasks and expectations.
- Confidentiality Agreement: Ask if the applicant agrees to remain confidential about store policies, employee behavior, and company data.
- Tax Information, Payment Details & Confirmation: Request any necessary information for employment details, as well as a final signature to affirm that all information provided is true and accurate.
Of course, each business is unique, and so is every mystery shopping assignment. Thus, it’s important to tailor each mystery shopping application to the company and situation as needed.
Common Mystery Shopping Pitfalls to Avoid
This article has covered many great strategies to follow when developing a mystery shopper application. However, there are a number of common missteps that many companies make during the hiring process. Here are the top three things to avoid:
- Incomplete Coverage: When organizing and coordinating mystery shoppers, some companies focus too heavily on a single touchpoint while neglecting others. For example, they may focus all their efforts on one less successful location in the hopes of bringing it up to par. Unfortunately, by not continuously checking in on their other locations, they may miss growing problems that they’ll have to deal with later.
- Lack of Communication: A quality mystery shopper is worth their weight in gold. But that’s only half the job. Businesses must be clear with their expectations and actively communicate with their evaluators in order to have a successful CX program. For example, a business may receive inconsistent reporting from their evaluation team if their expectations aren’t clearly set from the start.
- Not Acting on Data: This is like tripping just before the finish line. Having a robust CX evaluation program means nothing if the data and insights it gathers never make it into the strategy room. Collect and aggregate data from mystery shoppers and implement changes based on verifiable conclusions. That’s the only way to get a positive return on this investment.
It’s also important to note that a good mystery shopping program is a continual process. Although it may be tempting to hire contractors for a one-off shop, investing in quality mystery shoppers is better for the long term. That way, employees can handle multiple shops at various locations and touchpoints, ensuring consistency and increasing value. Plus, the longer the mystery shopping program itself is in place, the more revenue it generates.
Skip the Mystery Shopper Application Process—Partner with Us
By now, it’s clear that hiring a crack team of mystery shoppers—and maintaining a quality CX evaluation program—is a lot of work. That’s why it’s worth considering outsourcing this task to a trusted CX partner like IntelliShop.
With a nationwide network of skilled evaluators already in place and ready to be deployed, we make it easy to get all the benefits of mystery shopping without the hassle of in-house management. Our easy-to-use platform also provides you with consistent, quality reports with data-driven strategies that can be instantly implemented to a business’s benefit. So if you’re looking to skip the mystery shopper application and hiring process and get right to the ROI, contact us. We’ll help you drive your CX to even higher success.
A Strong Mystery Shopper Application Is the Basis for Better CX
Building a successful CX evaluation program starts with creating an effective mystery shopper application. By carefully defining goals, tailoring questionnaires, segmenting shopper profiles, and integrating multi-channel aspects, businesses can ensure they recruit the right people for the job. Furthermore, avoiding common pitfalls can help maximize the value of these programs.
Ultimately, businesses seeking to enhance brand consistency, boost customer satisfaction, and improve their bottom line will optimize their investments with a strong CX program, which begins with a solid application.
