Using Mystery Shopping as part of your employee rewards initiative

We are all familiar with the phrase 'you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression'.

When it comes to your business this holds doubly true.

How a customer feels when they first interact with someone from your organisation will play a large part in whether they choose to work with you or a competitor.

Mystery shopping is an ideal way to ensure that you have consistency across your team’s customer interactions. You can test how individuals feel when they speak to your team on the phone, via live chat or face to face.

We explore how you can use mystery shopping as part of your employee rewards and why it’s a great idea to do so.

Retaining talent for longer

Right now, it’s most definitely an employee’s market. Roles are abundant, salaries are rising, and retention is harder.

A study undertaken in 2019 found that an average employee on £40,000 takes around £12,000 to replace. That was before the recent salary changes to the market and demands for more flexibility that have very much come into play post pandemic.

Therefore, wherever possible it is better to keep a great team member than lose them to your competitors. However, reasons for staff moving on go well beyond hard cash.

Employees now, more than ever, want to feel fulfilled in their work.

Integrating rewards into your mystery shopping results can provide both tangible money based or 'treat based' benefits. Be it an increase in commission, or something as simple as a team lunch, it empowers your teams to feel better rewarded not just for doing their job, but doing it well.

Move away from the negative

Making sure that your potential customers get a great experience is vital in safeguarding your business. But for your employees it can feel like they are under scrutiny. They may have had negative experiences with a previous employer using mystery shopping feedback in the wrong way.

Moving from mystery shopping as being primarily a benchmarking exercise and instead into a rewards-based initiative can remove these issues.

Of course, this does not remove the need to address issues found in mystery shopping audits. It does however mean that for those who perhaps need further training, the conversation starts at 'we want to help you to achieve these rewards', which is a positive rather than negative starting point.

Improve customer experience

It’s an old adage but it’s very true that happy staff make for happy customers.

By incentivising good service, your customers will get a better service.

While of course a great team will take pride in their work anyway, adding an element of reward to great mystery shopping experience will help them to consistently strive to not just meet, but exceed customer expectations.