Brands invest a lot of time, research, and money into developing a brand promise that seeks to meet (and exceed) customer expectations. An effective brand promise should serve as a North Star that aligns all of an organization’s Customer Experience, Operational Experience, User Experience, and Employee Experience objectives. But it’s easier said than done.
As customers have more avenues to interact with your brand than ever before, it’s becoming exceptionally more challenging to ensure your brand promise is delivered to every customer, on every channel, at every touchpoint. So, how do you make sure that every single customer is experiencing the brand the way you intended?
Operational measures of brand promise execution, like mystery shopping, provide a vital link between what you expect and the customer’s reality. The use of mystery shopping involves trained individuals acting as regular customers to evaluate specific aspects of the customer experience, offering a firsthand, unbiased assessment of how well your brand promise is being delivered. This objective lens complements CX research, which focuses on understanding customer perceptions and expectations through surveys, feedback forms, and other data sources.
Combining these methodologies enables organizations to:
- Ensure Brand Promise Alignment: Mystery Shopping reveals any gaps between the intended experience and what customers actually encounter, allowing for immediate corrective action.
- Design Experiences that Resonate: CX research provides insights into customer needs, preferences, and expectations, enabling businesses to design experiences that foster loyalty and grow wallet share.
- Identify Hidden Operational Issues: Mystery Shopping can uncover issues that customers might not explicitly report, such as inconsistent service, process bottlenecks, or even safety or brand standards compliance concerns.
- Measure the Impact of CX Initiatives: Implementing new training programs or process improvements? Combined with Employee Experience (EX) data, Mystery Shopping allows you to measure their real-world impact on the customer experience. By conducting shops before and after implementation, you can measure the effectiveness of your efforts and identify remaining gaps.
- Drive Continuous Improvement: The insights gleaned from Mystery Shopping, CX, and EX research fuel a continuous improvement cycle, ensuring your brand consistently delivers exceptional experiences.
Why A Combined CX and Mystery Shopping Program Matters
Customer feedback, while valuable, is subjective and influenced by personal biases. Mystery Shopping, on the other hand, offers an objective perspective, revealing potential issues that customers might not explicitly report. Additionally, Mystery Shopping delves deeper into the “why” behind customer perceptions. For example, while a customer survey might reveal that customers find the checkout process frustrating, Mystery Shopping can pinpoint the exact reasons – long queues, inefficient staff, or technical glitches. That’s why it is so important for brands to use both measurement solutions to truly understand the customer experience, both from an operational and an experiential perspective.
The Ipsos CX-MS Approach: Aligning Mystery Shopping with Your CX Strategy
To unlock the full potential of Mystery Shopping, it’s crucial to integrate it seamlessly with your overall CX strategy. The Ipsos CX-MS approach offers a robust 8-step framework to achieve this alignment:
- Identify Key CX Drivers: Start by analyzing existing customer data, including Voice of the Customer (VoC) survey data, to identify the specific factors that have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty for your business.
- Design the Mystery Shopping Program: Develop a tailored Mystery Shopping questionnaire that focuses on the processes and behaviors directly linked to the identified CX drivers.
- Objective Assessment: Deploy trained Mystery Shoppers to objectively evaluate performance on the targeted processes and behaviors.
- Correlation Analysis: Analyze the Mystery Shopping data in conjunction with other customer data to establish a clear relationship between employee performance and key CX metrics.
- Action Planning: Based on the analysis, develop specific, actionable steps to improve the key behaviors and processes that are directly impacting the customer experience.
- Implementation and Communication: Clearly communicate the identified actions to relevant teams, providing the necessary training, resources, and support to ensure successful implementation.
- Monitor CX Uplift: Continuously monitor key CX metrics to track the impact of the implemented changes and ensure they are driving the desired improvements in customer experience and return on your investment (ROCXI).
- Continuous Improvement: Regularly review and refine your CX drivers and Mystery Shopping program, making adjustments as needed to maintain alignment with evolving customer expectations and business objectives.
Case Study: A Recipe for Success in the Restaurant Industry
The power of the CX-MS approach is evident in a recent analysis conducted by Ipsos for a national fast-casual restaurant. By analyzing data from Voice of the Customer surveys, Mystery Shopping programs, and sales figures, Ipsos uncovered valuable insights that drove significant improvements:
- Pinpointing Dissatisfaction Drivers: VoC data highlighted key areas of customer dissatisfaction, including cleanliness, food quality, speed of service, order accuracy, and staff friendliness.
- Granular Insights for Targeted Action: Mystery Shopping provided specific, actionable details on how to address these pain points. For instance, cleanliness concerns were linked to litter in drive-thru areas, while food quality complaints were often associated with inconsistent food temperatures.
- Identifying Unexpected Sales Drivers: Interestingly, the analysis revealed that factors like food temperature, server appearance, and cleanliness had a more significant impact on sales than reducing wait times, challenging conventional assumptions.
- The Power of Consistent Measurement: Restaurants that scored above 90% on the mystery shopping questionnaire generated an increase of 16-17% in average monthly sales, equating to an estimated $18,000-$20,000 in additional monthly sales revenue, highlighting the importance of consistent measurement and ongoing optimization.
Elevating CX Through a Powerful Partnership
Mystery Shopping, when strategically integrated with your overall CX strategy, becomes a powerful tool for driving business outcomes. By embracing a structured approach like the Ipsos CX-MS framework, you can unlock a more holistic view of your organization. You gain objective, actionable insights that not only elevate your customer experience but also ensure that your brand promise isn’t just a statement—it’s the experience you deliver, every time, everywhere.
About Ipsos
Ipsos is the #1 experience insights firm in the world. We help organizations retain customers and recover those at risk, grow their share of spend, increase advocacy, and boost operational efficiency, all to ensure consistent execution of our client’s brand promise and deliver a Return on Customer Experience Investment (ROCXI). Learn more at Ipsos.com.
