Mystery Shoppers? Or True Customer Feedback? We Know Who the Winner Is!

As we mentioned in our previous article, adopting a customer-oriented approach instead of a product-oriented approach is a must rather than a preference in today's conditions for organizations. In current conditions where brands known as the biggest competitors compete with each other with almost the same quality standards, the smartest way for a brand to surpass a competitor is to switch to a customer oriented philosophy. Brands that recognize customer requests faster than their competitors and provide services for these requests can become the leaders of their sectors. Providing a good customer experience at this point is an absolute must of the customer-oriented approach. There are many different ways in which brands can learn what kind of customer experience they offer. The main methods are mystery shopper method and feedback systems.

Mystery Shoppers

The mystery shopper method is, in simple terms, the unexpected visit of a business by the person or companies previously agreed with for the measurement of their service quality. The main objectives of this method where you can learn about your customer experience are as follows:

• Mystery shoppers can observe the customer experience you provide by having a real shopping experience.
• It can provide you with the opinions of your actual customers about your business.
• You can get information about the attitudes of your employees.

Although the mystery shopper method is still used today, it brings many problems with it. These problems are:

• Mystery shoppers are looking for answers to questions the business owner is curious about, rather than the experience of a customer. As a result of this situation, actual customer experience and mystery shopper method results are different.
• The reports obtained from the mystery shopper method do not reflect the opinions of your actual customers. The score given by your mystery shopper to the question "How do you score your experience in our business on a scale from 1 to 5?", cannot provide you with a clear answer about what you have done correctly or incorrectly.
• People who visit your business are sometimes inattentive because they are not your actual customers. As a result, quality of the information obtained drops dramatically.
• You will not be able to make any changes in the process as the data to be provided to you in the report has already been determined.
• The data you obtain about your employees as a result of a limited number of visits can be misleading.
• You cannot have a real-time flow of data because the information you are getting is the result of a certain process.

Feedback Systems

Feedback systems are another method you can use for information about your customer experience. With the necessary technological infrastructure, you can collect customer feedback from many different locations, both digital and physical. This method, which allows you to find out about the opinions of your actual customers, is being preferred by many organizations with the developing technology. Reliable and actual customer feedback obtained in real time from contact points also eliminates many problems encountered in the mystery shopper method. Some of the advantages of feedback systems are:

• The feedback you receive from your actual customers provides you with the clearest insights. Your customers, who leave feedback in order to get a better service, always provide you with the most sincere opinions.
• Unlike mystery shopper system, you can measure your quality of service not at any particular time but over a wide range of time.
• There is no limit to the data that you can obtain with feedback systems. Your customers can provide you with information on many different subjects from their point of views.
• With real-time flow of information, you can act without delay and increase your customer satisfaction.
• With the changes you can make in your flow of questions, you will be able to access the data suited to your needs at any time.

When we compare mystery shopper method and feedback systems, we can easily say that mystery shopper method does not fully meet the needs of businesses in today's conditions. Mystery shopper method, which provides insights into businesses on predetermined issues in a limited time frame, is losing its functionality day by day with the developing technology. Feedback systems that provide real-time insights of actual customers to the businesses are increasingly expanding their reach.

You can come across some success stories of different organizations in different environments that made certain changes in their businesses and transformed those changes into profitability based on the insights obtained through feedback systems. For example, a brand that keeps the customers in its stores for longer periods and raises sales by offering drinking water in its stores. Or a hotel that chooses a more elegant design upon learning that thick-framed x-ray devices are disturbing to customers. These two examples that prove the importance of offering a good customer experience, once again, show the positive impact of collecting actual customer feedback. Possible misleading results obtained with mystery shopper method are now a thing of the past with feedback systems based on data from actual customers.

With its strong infrastructure and expertise in feedback technologies, Pisano provides feedback service to hundreds of customers around the world. Pisano feedback systems, which offer real-time high-volume feedback from a variety of digital and physical locations, provide its customers with the way of designing a better customer experience. Pisano operates with the principle of happy customers for happy businesses and believes in the power of feedback for a better world. Design a better customer experience with Pisano and bring your organization to the future!