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7.1 Mystery shopping can provide you with very specific and detailed feedback on areas of your service. Someone commissioned by you (you could recruit some of your own users to do this) tests the service, looking at a number of predetermined areas, and then reports back. This should give you a picture of the type of experience a real user would have. The process is relatively simple, although you will get much more out of it if it is well structured.
Points to think about:
 | Suitability: this approach is more suited to some services, and aspects of services, than others. Front-line operations, where it is important to check that customers are being treated quickly and courteously, and being given the right information, are suitable.
| The shopper: the mystery shopper should preferably be typical of your real users. They should not be given too much background knowledge (which may restrict their ability to see the service as real users do), but they should be given guidance on how to assess the service and how to feed back the information.
| Running the scheme: you might want to contract out your mystery shopping to an external research firm. If you decide to run the scheme in-house, you will need to consider how to ensure enough turnover of your shoppers so that they don't become too knowledgeable. You also need information from your mystery shoppers in a consistent format, so you will need to think about questionnaire design, briefing for your shoppers, and the practicalities of how they will feed back their information to you.
| Systems: as well as quality of service issues and the responses of staff, this approach can also identify problems with systems; for example, are signs and directions clear, is correct information on display in offices, and are relevant leaflets available?
| Individual incidents: what are you going to do with the information? You will get snapshot details of individual incidents, and will need to make sure that 'one offs' are not given too much weight. If it looks like there might be a problem in a particular area, send another mystery shopper in to test the same service - 'one offs' and more fundamental problems can then be handled differently.
| Presentation: you need to think carefully about how you present the idea to staff - it can be seen as an underhand way of checking up on them, and a distraction from serving 'real' customers.
| Incentives: think about incentives, both for mystery shoppers and for staff. Encourage shoppers to highlight good as well as bad service, and then reward the staff who have performed particularly well.
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Pros
| Precise and detailed feedback.
| Relatively simple to implement.
| Equivalent to asking other users for their experiences.
| Flexible and immediate. You should be able to highlight particular service areas and investigate possible problems quickly.
| Can be used to commend/motivate staff.
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Cons
| More applicable to front-line, person-to-person services.
| Staff are often suspicious of schemes.
| Only gives isolated instances and small samples.
| Regular shoppers could get too experienced/stale.
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Costs: relatively cheap, depending on how you do it.
Use to: test specific areas of service delivery.
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Post Office Counters Ltd – Sunderland Branch Office
Post Office Counters Ltd conduct monthly mystery shopper surveys at selected
Post Offices. Post Office Visit Questionnaires are used by independent consultants
to assess individual offices. The questionnaire includes questions on appearance of
offices, condition of offices, waiting times, presence of name badges and accuracy
of information given. Following the visit to an office by a mystery shopper, the
office receives a written report highlighting the results of the survey. Sunderland
Branch Office uses these results to identify staff training needs.
Contact: Ann Riddell tel: 0191 510 2185 fax: 0191 514 4394
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