How to use feedback from mystery shopping: 9 tips to make mystery shopping research a success
April 23, 2023
Knowing how to deal with receiving feedback is an art. Feedback is often taken the wrong way, with people reacting defensively or not listening at all. Which is a shame, because constructive criticism enables you to learn and grow as a person and as an organization. That applies to feedback from mystery shopping research too. We’ll give you 9 tips on how to use feedback from mystery shopping in learning and making the research a success with your team.
1. Collect and share tips and compliments
Mystery shoppers almost always share tips and compliments. These snippets of text can offer an easy, accessible way to inspire and motivate! So take a moment to collect short sentences and share them within your team to establish a positive, constructive atmosphere.
2. Follow up on every result
Never let good feedback go to waste. Whether you receive a positive, negative, or average score from the research, make sure you always follow up on a result. You can pat someone on the back, plan a one-on-one conversation, or share some advice. That way, you’ll translate feedback to actionable insights.
3. Organize a competition
A positive sense of competition can incite people to go the extra mile for every customer. Store competitions have proven to be effective means to highlight the best performing stores or employees.
“Great communication is the key to a broad support base.”
4. Listen to your team
Be sympathetic to your team members and their stories. Feedback can be quite direct and sensitive. But a disappointing score doesn’t make someone a bad employee. There are always two sides to the story.
For example, it could very well be that the employee was really doing something useful, but struggles to prioritize. In these cases, mystery shoppers offer tangible leads to have a constructive talk. That’s the right way to deal with feedback and making the most of it together.
5. Celebrate successes
Mystery shopping is a tool to learn from – not to audit or control people. So make mystery shopping fun by celebrating successes together. Make sure you put top performers in the limelight with a personal compliment or an original reward!
6. Communicate like a champ
Great communication is the key to a broad support base for mystery shopping research. Take the time to explain the research goals and methods to those involved. Tell everyone how you will handle the results within the organizations. Most of all, emphasize that the results act as the carrot rather than the stick.
7. Involve your team
Employees from all layers in the organization can add valuable input to the development and improvement of your research. Goals and strategies are formulated at HQ, but store managers have all the practical insights. These can be very beneficial to improving the research and increasing the support base. So be transparent and ask for active involvement from people all over the organization.
“Mystery shopping should act as the carrot rather than the stick.”
8. Make people responsible
Mystery shopping can have a large positive impact on your organization. That not only requires a broad support base, but it also needs people within the organization to carry the project and spread the results throughout. Regional managers and trainers are examples of people who are in a great position to do just that. By making the results important and getting them where they need to be, you’ll make the most out of mystery shopping feedback.
9. Be smart about disappointing results
Things don’t always go your way. Some mystery shoppers may have bad experiences and they will share them. So, how to deal with these situations? In the first place, make sure your team is a safe place. Individuals within your organization should not be publicly chastised for bad results. Publicly discussing results can work wonders, but anonymize the situation and involve the whole team.Also talk to the employee privately, and look at the result together. Give them a chance to take it in and look at how the experience affected the bad score. Then, you can talk about how to improve in the future.
Want to talk more about mystery shopping?
Use these tips in your current or future mystery shopping research. Want to know more about how we do it at Secret View? Contact us, we’re happy to tell you more about our positive view on mystery shopping!