Solving Major Challenges in the Retail Industry with Mystery Shopping
Solving Major Challenges in the Retail Industry with Mystery Shopping
Online retail stores and online retail shopping has become incredibly popular. Yet, they are finding it difficult to differentiate themselves from their online retail store competitors when it comes to their products and services. This is the perfect time for retail stores and retail businesses to get back in the game with strong customer experience strategies and customer experience management. This makes retail stores a very competitive space at the moment since they have been dealing with a footfall that has only been decreasing in the recent past. Therefore, a good customer experience that retail customers cannot refuse is unavoidable for any retail business. The most powerful solution to finding out what can be done better in a retail store is the mystery shopping research method. It can bring back customers, make the existing customers happy by acknowledging their needs and increase sales and revenue in the retail store.
So, what is mystery shopping?
Mystery shopping is also known as the secret shopper research method. It is simply a group of people posing as real customers who enter the store and go about the customer journey like a regular customer. The only difference is that they also continuously observe and then report any existing or potential issues that could be causing the downfall of the retail store in the retail industry. They interact with the staff, asking them general questions and buying products to eventually test out the relevance of the products too. They also look at the customer service provided after the purchase has been made. They are trained to look at the safety, ambience, promotions and appearance of the space as well as to duly report them onto the reporting platform where all these observations are stored to help the decision makers make better choices for the improvement of their retail store, retail store products and retail store services. It is not the most unusual of occurring for a retail store to go through a phase where they are not in touch with their customer experience or their competitor’s offerings. However, the benefits of mystery shopping in retail industry can help retailers out in setting up strategies that can work on customer retention and customer satisfaction. The findings of mystery shopping research are real-time, reliable and comprehensive.
What are the greatest challenges of the retail industry? Following a good customer experience and maintaining multi-channel interactions in a retail store. In this blog, we will take a look at how these two major challenges in retail industry can be overcome through mystery shopping.
With over 86% of retail customers looking out for a good customer experience as opposed to the price point of a product, it is important for you as a retailer to start looking at each customer touchpoint and work on them backwards to find a solution. Secondary research may be helping you out with that temporarily but almost nothing can assist you in optimizing your customer experience in retail store, products and services like the mystery shopping research method. That is why all the leading retail stores in the retail industry are looking out for specific customer touchpoints to identify discrepancies. It is so widely used because it can find flaws at the ground level and use those insights to make changes at the highest levels. Mystery shoppers pay attention to every detail and are trained to ask all the right questions to the on-ground staff and the customer service agents to derive knowledge that you as a retailer might be missing out on.
They can specifically point out how long it takes for a salesperson to respond to a query or how many promotions are going on in the store and also other crucial details. With the kind of mystery shopping data found in a retail store, you can work on improving the current system that is being followed and switch it up for customers to be attracted to your retail store. Mystery shoppers identify negative and positive experiences for you to understand what could be working and what is definitely not working for your retail store customers because how your customer journey is going is far more important than the changes you would like to incorporate in the stores. Mystery shopping helps you in pointing out the changes you need in your customer experience because - the customer is king.
Most retail stores in the retail industry now approach their customers from multiple channels, as we like to call it in the customer experience industry, the omni-channel approach where you reach out to their customers in a non-redundant, optimistic manner across all the channels that customers use. This includes online platforms, emails, and telephonic conversations. More often than we would like to admit this can go terribly wrong because the message may change across platforms. A mystery shopper can approach your retail brand to see how each of the platforms compare to each other, whether they are in line with the directives, if the conversations and approaches are pleasant on every channel and if the right format of reaching out to the customers is being followed. The insights from the individual experiences are then compared, analysed and worked upon for a better experience for the customer.
Retail store employees and retailers can find, through mystery shopping, critical data like an email response takes up to three days for a response, and emailers and telephonic conversations cannot find the basic details of the customers and the like. When all these insightful retail store data are collected, a retail company can receive an organised and holistic view of all the customer touchpoints across every channel. With this data in hand, it becomes relatively easier for a retailer to take actions that yield positive results. It could help the retailer invest in resources, change channels or know how to approach different channels without changing the message or the positioning. Moreover, the retailer will be able to remove certain channels that are not working and invest that commercial in improving their customer experience.
SonataGBW, as a leading customer experience company, has thousands of trained mystery shoppers who can identify the major challenges in retail store and report them on our real-time reporting platform to help you better your retail industry customer experience and being back footfall into the retail store. Our mystery shoppers can gather all the necessary data and information you need to improve your retail store sales and retail store revenue.
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Our CX solutions are focused on transforming the total customer experience through surveys, metrics, analytics and auditing by using the CXM framework to combine physical measurements with digital Platformation™ capabilities. We are committed to finding the right customer experience strategy that can lead to a competitive advantage.
Sonata GBW is a global technology company specializing in customer experience CX measurement, platform-based digital transformation, supporting businesses to become connected, open, intelligent and scalable. Global coverage of more than 105 markets with over 27 years of market leadership through extensive measurement capabilities, powerful and intuitive reporting and analytics platforms give us the leverage to improve customer experience. It has presence across USA, Canada, EMEA and APAC regions. If you would like to know more about how we can assist you, please fill out the business enquiry form below.