Albert Heijn x Secret View
2/11/2021
The second partnership under the umbrella of Ahold Delhaize is a fact. And what a partnership it is! We’re over the moon to welcome Albert Heijn to our club of clients. Albert Heijn and Secret View have been working together since the spring of this year to gather feedback from real customers for Albert Heijn, AH to go and AH Online. Using Secret View’s community, insights are collected about customer experience in the supermarkets and online, and about compliance with regulations on alcohol and tobacco sales.
With a staggering number of 996 supermarkets, Albert Heijn is the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands. Our relationship with Albert Heijn goes way back. Or, at least, with part of Albert Heijn, as we’ve been working together with AH to go for years. Now, through a broader partnership with Ahold Delhaize, we’re taking the next step. Secret View’s community will be utilized for several purposes at all Albert Heijn formulas.
Compliance research
An important part of the research is aimed at compliance with regulations on alcohol and tobacco sales. More specifically, the research focuses on ID checks of all customers under 25. Whether you’re in the supermarket buying something at the cashier, or scanning items yourself at the self-scan register, or having your groceries delivered through AH.nl, the alcohol and tobacco regulations are applicable everywhere. And that’s something Albert Heijn is very serious about. To them, it is of the utmost importance that no alcohol or tobacco is sold to minors, hence why every customer under 25 years old is required to show their ID when buying them at Albert Heijn.
That’s why, with the help of Secret View’s mystery shopping community, each formula’s compliance performance will be measured and mapped. The research results are visualized in Secret View’s online performance dashboard, enabling every manager at Albert Heijn to use the results to their benefit immediately.
Steven de Kroes, Director Digital and Services at Albert Heijn, states: “With Secret View, our teams are enabled to get detailed insights into the compliance with regulations on age-restricted products. We learn exactly where we’re performing well and where we aren’t, allowing us to accurately target our employee trainings. The fact that all managers at all organizational levels get access to their own dashboards completes the feedback loop. Now we’re able to work at improving our performance from both the store level and from our headquarters.”
Customer experience
Aside from compliance research, Albert Heijn is using our community to get insights into customer experience. At AH to go, we have successfully been doing intensive and effective mystery shopping research for a long time. With a weekly visit frequency, every touchpoint in the customer journey is being measured thoroughly. The mystery shoppers alternate visits between the different departments, such as the coffee corner, the bakery, and the fresh produce section. This data is then used to optimize the customer experience at AH to go continuously.
The partnership has had a successful start and the researches are in full swing. We’re very much looking forward to providing Albert Heijn with valuable insights in the next years!
Do you want to collect real customer insights and improve your customer experience like Albert Heijn?
Secret View does mystery shopping research in most European countries and in multiple other countries. Discover the possibilities for large organizations and small businesses or just contact us!
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