Customer Experience Evaluations Boost Overall Scores with 20% Shopper Growth for Large Grocery & Convenience Store

THE CHALLENGE

Customer experience evaluations—like mystery shopping—are essential tools for brands looking to level up their operations and stay competitive. They provide a ground-level view of how brand standards are actually being delivered in real time, across real locations, by real people. More importantly, they uncover what customers actually experience and think—not just what they say in surveys.

When done right, these evaluations spotlight gaps, highlight excellence, and provide the actionable insight needed to fine-tune service, improve consistency, and drive customer loyalty. In short: you can’t improve what you don’t see—and mystery shopping shows you what matters most.

A large grocery and convenience store, operating 400+ locations, approached IntelliShop to identify how to improve the customer experience within their stores.

CLIENT OBJECTIVES

With customer experience evaluations, the client sought to:

• Identify ways to improve customer experience across all store locations
• Evaluate and optimize cross department interactions and improve speed of service

OUR APPROACH

IntelliShop recommended:

• Customer Experience Evaluations – Measure the customer experience with mystery shopping in all grocery and converience stores chainwide evaluating customer experience, cross department interactions and speed of service to maximize customer satisfaction and revenue.

Mystery shopping (or secret shopping) is a market research methodology designed to gain insights into how a company performs its operations at key customer engagement points. Unlike sentiment-based customer research, such as satisfaction surveys, mystery shopping focuses on gathering specific details about processes and operational compliance. Learn more about the power of mystery shopping.

THE SOLUTION

IntelliShop designed a custom, comprehensive customer experience evaluation that spanned all of the client’s store locations—not to simply flag poor performance, but to identify standout employees and top-performing processes across the board.

Using year-over-year mystery shopping data, weekly onsite visits were conducted at each location. During each visit, evaluators:

• Observed the full customer experience, from entry to exit
• Assessed each department individually to get a complete picture
• Completed a product purchase and register transaction
• Interacted directly with associates at checkout and throughout the store

This approach provided more than surface-level feedback. It delivered actionable insight into what was working, where consistency was lacking, and how customer-facing teams could replicate success across all locations.

Research from Harvard Business Review shows that companies delivering strong customer experiences see significantly higher revenue growth and greater customer loyalty over time. It further states that, “given the importance of customer value, leaders should track it as rigorously as they track other key assets, such as buildings, machinery, inventory, and marketable securities.”

THE RESULTS FROM CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE EVALUATIONS

The client didn’t just get data—they got a clear roadmap for action. As real-time insights came in, immediate steps were taken to elevate the customer experience. That included:

• Targeted product knowledge training within departments
• Better cross-department communication
• More meaningful engagement at the register

The result? Tangible improvements across the board. Within just a few months, more employees were being rated as “truly exceptional”—a direct result of following IntelliShop’s recommendations.

Measurable Impact That Moves the Needle

Thanks to in-depth customer experience evaluation insights:

• 10% of stores improved their overall scores year-over-year since 2017
• 20% of shoppers said their visit was “better than usual”
• The lowest-performing district saw a 10% improvement in just one year

These aren’t vanity metrics. They’re proof that consistent, customer-focused improvements lead to real business outcomes. According to a study by Forrester, companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards on the S&P 500 index by nearly 80%. Better CX isn’t just about satisfaction—it drives loyalty, word-of-mouth, and bottom-line growth.

When you prioritize the customer experience, you’re not just creating happy customers—you’re building a competitive advantage.

Customer experience evaluations aren’t optional anymore—they’re your edge.
Ready to raise the bar? Schedule a complimentary consultation with IntelliShop today.