"Mystery shoppers" can give stores quality control in what is more important: their consumers and the brand.
By Francisco Rosas
If a mystery shopper had existed in the car agency where Francisco bought his new car, directives of the agency would know how he was generally attended.
For these cases, there's one solution: mystery shopper, a marketing tool that, according to Julio Zilli, Auditor Service director, is useful to verify customer service, the affection of commercial policies, the correct fulfillment of procedures and rules, product knowledge and description, brand recommendation, suggestive sale and employee honesty.
David Zamora Rangel, Perspectiva Consultoría Creative director, explained that mystery shopper is a right market research, because it helps companies to find mistakes that are made inside the organization or what the competition is making. Something important for decision process.
Mystery shopper is a program that most companies use permanently, because in that way employees expect that particular "shopper", attending all costumers as if they were a mystery shopper.
"Employees know that in any moment a simulated shopper can arrive, so they are in constant alert. We are the owner's eye", he explained.
According to Juan Mario Rodríguez, ACNielsen specialized manager, retail companies like malls, banks, supermarkets, telecommunications, hotels, and furniture enterprises are the ones that use more this service.
This tool helps detecting disloyal employees: some companies ask for making "special proposals" to their employees in order to get an illegal service or to make them sale products outdoors.
According to Zilli, Auditor Service has cases in which food companies have increased 15% in sales after using that tool, while in fast food businesses the increase is about 7% due to the promotions that they offer to the consumers.
According to the specialist, a company measures employees fulfillment with the client, demonstrating that if a company starts the mystery shopping with a qualification of 60, after some time this will increase to a qualification of 90 over 100.In Mexico, this tool has barely 9 years and there are just six specialized mystery shopper companies, even though any advertising agency offers it.
"Considering the fact that anyone can give mystery shopper service, specialized people are required to obtain better results, avoiding superficial levels", Zamora said.
Juan Mario Rodriguez showed that studies about the methodology of mystery shoppers have increased during the last year, which makes it one of the best all over the world.
Zamora explained that nowadays few companies use this kind of tools, becoming something necessary if they really want to survive in a long period of time." Even though many companies see unnecessary to invert in this sort of things, one they use it realize that there are more benefits through time.
Zilli showed that the tool helps to reduce costs by not sending supervisors to verify branch offices.
On the other hand, with a mystery shopper company you can do it permanently all over the country because it counts with capable people for doing this labor.
"Mystery shoppers" can play an important role for stores by giving a quality control operation in what is more important" their consumers and the brand.
Zilli make clear that the purpose of the tools is to make the client come back to the business, because if something disagrees him or her they will deny to come back.
Auditor Service studies showed that 50% of the clients can leave the store if they have to queue too long to pay. "If a salesman doesn't agree the customers, will make a 25% leave and another 24% will go to another store if they are not attended.
For Zilli, every customer badly attended represents a lose of chance referring to sales and profits, because an unsatisfied customer will tell his or her experience to 10 more persons approximately, and those 10 persons will pass the information to another 40 persons. "A bad experience in the store can be a possible lose of even 50 target consumers".
Juan Mario Rodríguez revealed that every company in Mexico dedicated to do this sort of research yearly takes from 10 to 20 programs in different sectors.
