Did you know that on average, MSL does 100,000 assessments every year? Of the 1,000s of companies we’ve worked with, 28% of them test all of their customer touchpoints such as face-to-face, social media, emails, phone and website. Whilst face-to-face visits are a great way to look into the customer experience, it’s just as important to test the whole customer journey. Let’s not forget that many customers now prefer to carry out their customer journey or query online. Their online experience may impact whether they decide to visit your premises, or not.
We’ve put together a checklist of what you should be measuring, and how your business can drive positive behaviours amongst teams through these insights.
WEBSITE / MOBILE APP
You’ll likely want to ensure that every customer visiting your website is having the experience you’d expect. Most of us have clicked off of a website through frustration of it not working as it should be, and the reality is, it’s very easy to just click and find the information or product somewhere else. Your customer experience is the one thing that can really help you stand out from your competitors, so it’s important to make sure that the online experience is just as positive as the in-store experience.
Trained website assessors can provide valuable insight into what is often the first interaction customers have. We’ll work with you to set the assessment criteria and our panel of mystery shoppers will be tasked to navigate the website on desktop and mobile whilst recording the screen and themselves, to enable the viewer to monitor their progress. The webcam footage will accurately capture their reactions and facial expressions in real time, so you can fully understand their experience.
Assessment Areas Include:
Ease of navigation
Information availability
Response times
Enquiry handling
Purchase process
Availability of products
Usability and compatibility of web page mobile view
Experience of Chatbots / Live chat with teams
Comparison between Website and Mobile App
SOCIAL MEDIA
Businesses spend time posting updates across their social media pages, but often forget to assess how well they’re performing from their customer’s point of view. Mystery shoppers can test a variety of platforms from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to TikTok, WhatsApp and Messenger.
The social media journey is an important part of the sales funnel process and will often generate leads directly, or direct customers to your website. Social media assessments can cover all of these questions, and more…
- Are teams responding to comments quickly?
- Are follower comments being liked?
- Is all of your page information and imagery up to date?
- Are all call-to-action buttons working correctly?
- How long does it take on average to reply to private messages?
- Are teams providing the information required in messages?
- Is the message and tone you’re sending out, correct?
- Are negative interactions being handled appropriately and in a timely manner?
Shopping across social pages has increased hugely over the past decade, so this is also an area that you can test. E.g. ease of purchasing, non-functioning elements, etc.
Top tip: Ensure you reply quickly to messages and posts. Typically, customers don’t like to wait more than 3 hours. Try and commit to replying to messages and posts within 3 hours for optimum customer satisfaction!
EMAILS
According to Audiencepoint.com*, the average open rate of email marketing campaigns in 2023 is just 21.33%. That means that over 70% of customers aren’t even reading your emails!
For communications like these, to enable your subscriber list to sustain and grow, it’s worth checking the readability, layout and newsworthiness of your campaign. Not to mention whether your links direct users to the correct place and how the feel and tone is received.
For other emails where teams are typically responding to customer enquiries, mystery shoppers can cover areas such as;
- Response times for replies
- Content
- Professionalism of staff
- Accuracy and depth of information given
- Friendliness and rapport building
- Follow up information given
Shoppers will provide screenshots of their experience throughout, accompanying their assessment form. You can use these insights to see where you’re performing well, using this data to drive positive behaviours amongst teams, and where further communication may be needed. It may also identify areas for reform within your marketing and communications.
PHONE CALLS
“This call may be recorded for training purposes”. More often than not, you’ll hear this at the start of an automated call with a business. If you’re not yet testing this area of your business, here’s why you should.
In our last article, we outlined how most of us don’t tend to regularly provide reviews. We just tell everyone else instead – good or bad! Which is why it’s important to take a look at your team’s phone calls to ensure they’re not only representing your brand to its best, but that the experience fulfils customer expectations.
Our mystery shopping programmes can gain insights into customer service phone lines, sales team communications, complaints and individual branch services. Shoppers are given a specific scenario to complete and feedback on their phone call. These can be audio recorded for each assignment. If you’ve already got recordings, we can review existing recordings you may have against an agreed set of criteria. As with email communications, a range of areas are tested, including response times and enquiry handling.
Once your programme insights have been gathered, we will upload all the data to your bespoke client portal. Alerts can be set up so that managers can be notified as soon as there are results to review and implement changes where necessary. For more details on our bespoke reporting portal, see here.
If you’d like to discuss how a mystery shopping programme can help your business, contact our client team on 01409 255025, enquiries@mystery-passengers.com.
*https://audiencepoint.com/what-is-a-good-open-rate-for-email-in-2022/#:~:text=Average%20Open%20Rate%20for%20Email,number%20to%20aim%20to%20achieve.