What really happened to your Customer: Introducing our Mystery Shopper Research Series

Daniel Ord talks on Mystery Shopper Research

Welcome to our Mystery Shopper Research Series.  It’s time to talk about what really happened to your Customer.

xavi-cabrera-_-uN7DbAE-o-unsplash.jpgBecause whatever your Customers, Clients, Guests or Patients really go through shapes how they think, feel and act next.

And how they act next really matters. Whether that’s to –

  • Try that new product you’re offering – or not.
  • Complete that digital journey – or not.
  • Add to their order – or not.
  • Write a nice review for you – or not.
  • Forgive you when you make a mistake – or not.

And great Mystery Shopper Research can help.  Because at its heart, this method of Customer research tells us what really happened to Customers.

Across the journeys and touchpoints that we choose – in advance – to study.

And measured against the performance standards that we choose – in advance – to measure success.

The House of Customer Experience

Think of your Customer Experience as a house.  Your Customers are all inside.

Each Customer research method you use is like a window bringing light into different rooms or aspects of the Customer Experience.

A house with only one or two windows would be pretty dark, just as relying on too few Customer research methods provides an incomplete view of your Customers.

Today, an Organization’s Customer research mix might include transaction and relationship surveys, ethnographic research, unsolicited feedback analysis, experience design, journey mapping and more.

But no matter what mix we settle on, the more relevant windows we have in our House of Customer Experience the more light that shines in.

Illuminating what our Customers need and want from us.

Mystery Shopper Research is one of these windows

Mystery Shopper Research very specifically allows you to study and understand what Customers actually go through when they interact with your organization.

Whether that’s studying a day out at your theme park, the test drive of a new electric car at your dealership or the quality of investment advice provided by the wealth manager at your bank.

No single method of Customer research can provide all the answers.  Nor should it.

As you’ll see in this series, Mystery Shopper can be used to explore learnings received via other research methods – such as complaints data, operational metrics or survey comments.

For example, while surveys tell you how Customers feel, Mystery Shopper Research shows you the exact steps that led to that feeling.

Or results from Mystery Shopper can inspire a deeper dive using other methods – such as reviewing unstructured feedback or the performance of operational metrics.

Mystery Shopper can also be used to provide benchmarks of performance –

  • Against selected competitors
  • Vis a vis best-in-class organizations
  • Before and after a significant change initiative such as introducing a new software or a new training program and measuring the impact of that change

Our definition of Mystery Shopper Research

Here is our comprehensive definition of Mystery Shopper Research –

Mystery Shopper Research is a qualitative research method that employs trained Mystery Shoppers to conduct pre-planned scenarios across pre-selected journeys and touchpoints. based on a clearly defined goal and set of objectives.
Mystery Shoppers capture objective scores on pre-defined performance standards and provide subjective feedback on their experience.
Both the objective scores and subjective feedback received from Mystery Shoppers are validated by a dedicated Quality Assurance Team and are prepared for analysis and presentation.

In this series of articles, I will break down each component of this definition and explain what’s involved, the practices that help and real world examples from our global experience.

What our 25 years of Mystery Shopper Experience has taught us

Our Mystery Shopper know-how and examples come from our real world work with Mystery Shopper Clients.

Working on programs ranging from $5K to over a million dollars.  Around the world and for over 25 years now.

And to help me structure this series on Mystery Shopper Research, I draw on what we teach in our formal Mystery Shopper Research training course.

A training course that we put together to help our Clients get the most value from their Mystery Shopper program.

My goal for this Mystery Shopper Research series

If you want to unlock what really happens to your Customers and turn that insight into improved business performance, this series will show you how.

In addition to this Introduction article, we have written five additional articles which are available here –

I will add the remaining article links here as I publish them.  And if we can be of help to you on Mystery Shopper Research, I’d love to hear from you.

Daniel Ord

[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com

Customer ResearchCXFeatured
Send me a message

Decode the Customer Ecosystem

Want to stay in touch with our articles, insights & offers?