Senior leaders shape the value of Mystery Shopper Research — through how they react to uncomfortable findings.
This article is part of our Mystery Shopper Research Series — practical guidance on designing, running, and learning from Mystery Shopper programs.
A True Story: When Leaders Make Insight Unsafe
Here’s the true story of how senior leaders at one client reacted negatively to the findings from their Mystery Shopper program.
Once the fieldwork part of the program was finished we conducted our analysis. Most touchpoints were average — serviceable but not distinctive.
But their letters-touchpoint performed poorly.
For this touchpoint, we wrote letters and dropped them in various pre-designated mailboxes in different areas across various dates.
But rather than receiving the promised reply of between two to three days — for most letters there was no reply at all.
Even weeks later. The promised experience didn’t match the real experience at all.
Admittedly, we knew what we were getting into when we were appointed as the research provider.
Their reputation for service quality was mixed at best.
And the fact they were using Mystery Shopper Research as a tool for insight and improvement was actually a good sign.
But we were taken aback when — two weeks after after submitting the final results — we were asked to edit out the letter-touchpoint results and prepare the reports package all over again.
An observation: Once you remove weak results, you no longer have research — only internal PR.
A Month Later We Learned What Had Happened
A month later, our Client contact met up with us to explain all that had happened.
There were part of the internal Research Team tasked with presenting the of the Mystery Shopper program to the senior leaders.
We had not been invited to do the presentation — which is admittedly unusual.
When one senior leader saw the poor results for the letters-touchpoint, they apparently stood up and yelled at everyone at the conference table.
And launched into assigning blame.
Our client contact told us that the entire audience around that conference table was stunned into silence.
He told us that the unspoken message came across loud and clear:
It’s safer to hide bad results than to anger senior leaders.
That’s a great example of a cultural belief.
A cultural belief is a shared assumption people follow because it helps them succeed — or at least avoid failing — in an organization.
Cultural beliefs flow from senior leadership.
If they believe work from home is not productive, then few people in the organization will put work from home forward as a solution.
If they believe that only a person with a degree can do a certain job, then people in the organization will only look for (or work with) people with degrees.
See how that works? It’s not about what’s objectively true or not. It’s about what the leaders believe is true or not.
In this organization, the senior leaders created a cultural belief that it is safer to hide bad news than share it.
This is why people learn to sanitize dashboards, soften VOC comments, and ‘manage up’ instead of improve.
And this is how organizations end up massaging the metrics instead of improving experiences.
Avoid Terror in the Boardroom
It’s sad to see a viable Mystery Shopper program go down in flames. Simply due to the fear created by senior leaders.
Here’s what I’d suggest you do to mitigate this type of event.
Ask your senior leaders to sign a simple “Research Integrity Pledge” when a research program gets approved.
It could go like this:
This is our Research Integrity Pledge for the upcoming “Touchpoint Mystery Shopper” program.
We expect to see results that confirm strengths — and results that reveal weaknesses.
We commit to reviewing findings without blame, defensiveness, or result cleansing. Research findings will not be used to publicly shame individuals or departments.
We will use insights to improve systems, not punish messengers. Only by facing reality can we improve Customer Experience.
Ask Your Research Partner Present Findings
If you engaged an external research partner to conduct the research, let them present the findings.
Typically such a presentation will include the methodology, the findings themselves and what they mean, and examples from other Organizations.
External partners are often better positioned to provide context, benchmarks, and objectivity without internal political risk.
If leaders respect the truth of the findings, Mystery Shopper Research becomes a powerful engine for improvement. If they choose to massage the truth, the program is already dead.
Related reading; Our Mystery Shopper Research Series
Thank You for Reading
I regularly share stories, strategies, and insights from our work across Contact Centers, Customer Service, and Customer Experience. If this resonates, I’d love to stay connected.
You can drop me a line anytime, or subscribe via our website.
Daniel Ord
[email protected]
www.omnitouchinternational.com
