Mystery Shopping can help boost your ailing retail business
Mystery shopping, a nascent industry in India, is a way of helping your ailing business recover - retail therapy, some call it, but quite different in this case. It also provides an employment opportunity for some people via part-time shopping!
However, only a handful of companies in India provide this service, although it is the latest way to discover what\'s wrong in your brand stores. Mystery customer research is dedicated to providing organisations with key information and analysis regarding customer and employee satisfaction and loyality . Companies which do this research provide all the information needed to deliver excellence, increase sales, improve quality of performance, enhance customer loyalty and retain and train employees.
Out of the few companies providing this service in India, BARE International, a US-based firm, is the largest. Gurgaon-based Grass Roots India is another such company that provides its services to the telecom, banking and hospitality sectors. AQ Services International, headquartered in Singapore, has also recently set food in India and is in its initial phase of operations.
"We've been in India for only four years, despite our being a 20-year old company," says Nishith K.L. Bhandarkar, general manager, India, Middle East & Africa, Bare International. "This is because we entered when we thought the time was right. In India, we've noticed that customer is not king. Here, a customer might have to wait a few months for that Bajaj scooter or a year for a car. Now that more brands are coming into India, customer loyalty is decreasing further. To help brands better their customer service, we advise mystery research."
Mystery shopping works in a rather interesting way. A mystery shopper (a person hired by the mystery customer research company) pretends to be a real customer in a store (the client which hires the mystery customer research company). In his dealings with the brand staff, he gathers information and observes the key areas of delivery of product or service. He then submits a report that the company analyses and passes on to the client to bring out the drawbacks of a particular store or even a chain of stores. For authenticity, this mystery shopper can even purchase something (which is later reimbursed) and also carries a recorder and camera for the clients satisfaction.
All this helps organisations improve their service offerings, operations and sell more products and services, leading to better customer retention. It also helps firms objectively measure service experience, sales, operational flow, employee integrity, visual merchandising, competitive awareness and staff success.
"Real-time feedback helps retailers improve their performance by providing a range of tools, training and professional advice. It helps the organisations to evaluate products on offer and service levels of staff, as well as improve their business in todays competitive environment."
"We run mystery shopping programmes for many industry sectors including visits to cinemas, retail shops, restaurants, bars, hotels, car dealers, petrol stations, financial institutions, banks, etc,"says Bhandarkar. "It is exciting for shoppers, and alternatively, lets retailers evaluate what might be wrong in their formats."
On the other hand, this is an easy way for some to earn side money. Housewives, young students, shopaholics and even the less able can pose as mystery shoppers and make money. "We have 12,000 such evaluators across India and they range from executives to homemakers, college-goers to working women," says Bhandarkar. "Some do it for money, other for fun. Payments vary depending on the depth of service. We pay Rs300-1,500 per evaluation, excluding reimbursements," he adds. BARE helps housewives earn up to Rs1 lakh a year. "In India, where many women are homemakers, mystery shopping offers a helping hand in enhancing household income."
"We have received good response in India," says Bhandarkar. "Our clients include Shoppers Stop, McDonalds, STOC and Kuoni. For every firm, retaining customers is the most difficult. We judge, monitor and evaluate customers. In these bad times, retails need more help to uplift their respective brands. In fact, now we even evaluate a firms competitors to find out what the others are doing right," he adds.
Industries that can utilise this research are IT, telecom, hospitality, education, retail, automotive, transportation, travel & tourism, logistics, FMCG, banking and finance. Those with an interest in shopping and a keen eye for detail should try this out.
This article was published in the September 2009 issue of Business India magazine. Business India is one of Indias top read and circulated business magazines.
