Opinion: Why mystery shopping isn’t enough for retailers
By Dr. Pawan Singh, PeriscopeIQ
Customer experiences—whether they be a sale, an inquiry, a conversation with a manager or a walk down a store aisle—are at the heart of every customer relationship. These are the moments of truth for a company. Ultimately, these experiences drive customer satisfaction, loyalty and spending. So it is no wonder retailers are so interested in understanding exactly what the customer is experiencing.
Nearly every large retail brand employs or has employed mystery shopping to help management gain insight into their stores’ performance. For decades, mystery shopping has been the research tool of choice to measure customer experiences. While mystery shopping might work to identify issues on a case-by-case basis, it cannot generate the volume and reliability of intelligence that retailers need to truly improve the customer shopping experience. In the past, implementing an enterprise-wide system for collecting feedback from individual customers might have been cost-prohibitive and technologically daunting, however, enterprise feedback management (EFM) providers are perfecting this process. And evidence shows that customers are very willing to give feedback when asked.
Read more here.