Course Summary

Do you want to value your customers not just for their immediate transaction value but also over much longer periods – even the customer’s lifetime - and this approach starts with the current transaction; because it is recognised everywhere that it is far cheaper to retain an existing customer than to create a new one. It is at the customer interface that Mystery Shopping helps in very practical ways. Mystery Shopping is about measuring the performance of sales and service staff and management, often site by site, against agreed Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).

Are staff and management doing and saying what they have been trained to do and say? If you know the answer to this question and have systems in place to monitor it regularly, resolve issues, and create improvements – you are in control and can expect improvement.

Mystery shopping is most often used to measure the performance of sales and service processes to find ways of improving; and it is this improvement in sales and service that will create the return on investment demanded by the user. It is also often integrated with internal measures, customer opinion research, audits and other data gathering and analysis systems.

Course Objectives

Delegates will learn how to:

• Know what your competitors are doing that you need to learn from and what is the detail of their service, current offer, etc
• Ensure that staff and management are operating in compliance with the legal requirements of your industry
• Ensure that all staff are following company laid-down standards and procedures
• Identifying weaknesses in customer service, sales, compliance, etc doing the required training, and then checking that it is working.
• Ensure that staff are being honest about using the till, giving receipts etc.
• Identifying staff members and groups who deserve a reward
• The performance of franchise operators against the agreed operating procedures and standards
• Observing and measuring call centre performance
• Monitoring the performance and responsiveness of remote offices

Course Content

Course one – ’Mystery shopping - Getting the Basics Right’

This one-day course covers the basics of mystery shopping. Delegates may be new to mystery shopping or have limited experience. They will complete the day with good understanding of:

• What mystery shopping is
• What mystery shopping can and can’t do
• How mystery shopping can help their organisation
• The kinds of organisations that are selling and using mystery shopping services
• How to set up a mystery shopping program
• Ethical and practical guidelines for mystery shopping programs
• What can go wrong and how to fix it

Course two – ’Adding Value to Your Mystery Shopping’

This one-day course will be of benefit to experienced users and sellers of mystery shopping services who need to get more from their systems. It is a workshop involving both teaching and discussion where delegates are encouraged to describe and discuss their specific problems and ideas.

The trainers on this course will be supplemented by a very senior client who will share his extensive experience, give practical advice, and be involved in the discussion.

Delegates’ specific requirements of the course will be discussed beforehand so that their expectations can be fully met.

Delegates will finish the day with a more developed and in-depth knowledge of mystery shopping, and some ideas which should help to resolve any issues they may have with their mystery shopping programmes. The course will be specifically tailored to meet the needs of the delegates present and may include:

• A review of basic mystery shopping systems
• A focus on the delegates own interests
• The use of video and audio data gathering techniques
• Business to Business projects
• The use of shoppers’ comments
• The integration of mystery shopping results with other data sources including customer opinion research
• Buying, selling and measuring the ’return on investment’ for mystery shopping programs.