Customer Satisfaction Vs Mystery Shopping

In continuation of my article, it is important to note that every company needs to measure customer satisfaction.  It is the heart of any modern business strategy. Research has shown that most companies spend about 3% of revenues on measuring customer satisfaction. Understanding customer demographics, expectations, motivations, and desires creates an opportunity to serve customers better than competitors do.

Serving customers better creates satisfied customers, builds repeat business, and drives profitability.  Customer-driven companies eagerly spend that 3% of revenues to learn more about how they are doing with customers.

Customer-driven companies use customer satisfaction information for input in their long term strategy. Companies also require information to help them serve customers better. Can one set of data serve both short term and long term needs?  Is a customer satisfaction study a substitute for a mystery shopping study?  Can mystery shopping studies be used to gauge customer satisfaction? To answer these questions, you need to understand the overlaps and differences between customer satisfaction studies and customer service measurement studies, such as mystery shopping.

A customer who visited a grocery shop a week ago cannot tell you with accuracy about the specific attributes of his recent visit.  He probably does not remember whether he was greeted within a reasonable time, served within a reasonable time and served with a friendly attitude. All of those attributes of the visit, along with many others, combine to create a level of satisfaction in his/her mind.  That overall satisfaction is important to the strategy of the company and will ultimately affect long term decisions. But does it help the shop to serve customers better right now?  The answer is usually “no”.

Customer satisfaction surveys reveal how customers feel about customer service. They do not reveal why. Customer service measurement reveals the “why” that stimulates continuous improvement. Essentially, satisfaction surveys report perceptions and service surveys report performance.

If a satisfaction survey revealed that customers thought food service was slow in a chain of restaurants, valuable information has been gleaned.  Acting on this information alone would be impractical.   Would the chain simply ask employees to work faster? Would it risk serving undercooked food for the sake of quick service? Would it redesign its units to receive food orders more quickly?  Of course not.  The chain would drill down deeper into the data to determine the root cause, the “why”.

The chain would measure the speed of customer service it provides, likely using mystery shoppers to take those measurements.  If a subsequent mystery shopper study revealed that table-service customers were waiting an average of 10 minutes to receive their order, a specific reason for customers to perceive slow service has been isolated.  Causes for the delay can now be investigated.

Causes might include slow credit card authorizations, understaffing, a backlog waiting for a manager approval, or lack of staff training to use computers.  That one statistic—the more than 10-minute wait–gives managers a specific issue to work toward correcting. It gives the customer-driven company a way to serve customers better in the short term.