The Premier Mystery Shopping Company

International Retailer with over 2,000 Locations

Improving People to Create a Better Customer Experience

A retailer with over 2000 locations internationally had a goal of developing a measurable increase in their overall customer service and further developing their personnel, but they were unsure as to what to metrics to evaluate on an enterprise-wide scale.

Knowing that they needed a third party to evaluate their performance, they brought in Reality Based Group (RBG) and their suite of training tools and platforms that help companies evaluate customer service metrics and then implement management training to increase the overall perform

+ 50% increase in baseline grade   +50% Increase in Measured Behaviors  

Implementing a Process

RBG knew that they had to develop a process that was going to establish a baseline metric to determine where the opportunities for improvement were. To accomplish this, they developed a mystery shopper survey and sent hundreds of mystery shoppers around the world to visit the stores, buy something with a reimbursed per diem, and grade their experience. RBG also developed the survey in conjunction with the retailer so that every question was designed to promote actionable and trainable data points. The retailer also had the option of weighting certain sections heavier based on specific metric values.

And the Survey Says…

RBG’s initial evaluation uncovered multiple issues, such as:
• Employees weren’t greeting the customers within 30 seconds 58% of the time.
• Cashiers weren’t explaining the warranty 61% of the time.
• Cashiers weren’t checking ID for credit card purchases 49% of the time.

The Management Action Plan

Six months after implementing the holistic training programs, the customer reported a marked increase in their overall customer service, with application of measured behaviors increasing 50% and a baseline increase from 60 to a top grade of 90. That wasn’t the only win for the retailer. They noticed an immediate financial return on investment because the mystery shoppers on average spent 50% more than their reimbursed amounts in the stores, providing an instant increase to the bottom line.

Safety Inspections

As a side program, RBG was able to save the retailer even more money by taking over their safety inspections across all locations. Not only did this give them a discount on insurance, but servicing those safety audits locations requires a substantial investment in resources that the company would no longer have to spend. In addition, because RBG provides a third-party audit, they can aggregate the data across locations to look at trends that the retailer wouldn’t be able to spot with their own resources.