Look at your business through the eyes of your customers. Use mystery shoppers to help you measure the effectiveness of your training and determine how well your employees adhere to your service standards. You identify the sales and service behaviors that you want to deliver and CIMA Insight provides the feedback.

What behaviors should be measured? Any behavior that touches your customers whether it's in person, on the phone or on your website. Contact CIMA Insight today and get the tools you need to coach your employees to stellar service delivery.

Does your company have an interest in investing in a mystery shopping program but doesn’t know where to begin?

Starting with telephone mystery shops is a cost-effective way to get valuable information that will help you retain customers, improve customer service, and increase growth and sales.

Telephone shops can determine your staff's:

1. Level of professionalism
2. Level of friendliness and welcoming attitude towards clients or prospects
3. Communication skills
4. Knowledge of products or services

A phone call often forms the first impression of your organization for a prospect. A less than positive telephone interaction can easily result in the loss of a prospect or customer. Treating each phone call as if the call were a face to face encounter with the customer or prospect is vital to the sales and growth of your organization.

Would you like to gain insight into how your brand is conveyed over the phone?  Contact CIMA Insight for a telephone shop proposal today!

Don’t Fall Victim to Mystery Shopping Scams!

Does getting paid to shop sound like a dream? Well, it is! The work is fun and it provides valuable feedback to businesses. But beware. Mystery shoppers should know there are mystery shopper recruiting scams that might cost them money. Why are there so many mystery shopping scams?With today’s high unemployment rate, people are looking for ways to make some extra cash. Scammers recognize this and seek to create an opportunity from others’ misfortune.

Six Red Flags:

You don’t pay. They do! Never pay for a list of mystery shopping companies that are currently hiring shoppers. A free list is available through the Mystery Shoppers Providers association (MSPA) website http://www.mysteryshop.org.

• You should NEVER pay a fee to become a mystery shopper. A legitimate company will pay you, not the other way around.
• A legitimate mystery shopping company will never ask you for a money transfer. Never accept a cashier’s check in exchange for you wiring or sending money to a person or company.
• Although mystery shopping is a great supplement to your income, any company that promises you can make a full-time living as a mystery shopper is almost certainly a scam.
• Never deposit a check from a stranger, especially if you're being asked to wire money.
• If a mystery shopping company promises to pay you upfront before you complete the shop, it is a scam. Shoppers are paid after completing their assignment and submitting a survey.
• Watch out for mystery shopping companies offering an extremely high shopper payment for a relatively easy job. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Protect Yourself!

• Make sure the company is a member of the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA). To do this, visit the MSPA site at http://www.mysteryshop.org/. You will be able to register with certified MSPA-member companies. You can also view a database of available mystery shopping jobs from legitimate companies.
• Before registering with a mystery shopping company, search online for reviews and comments about the company to which you are applying.
• Before doing business with any company, ask them to provide a physical address and phone number. Verify the information by doing an Internet search.

If you think you have encountered a mystery shopping scam, file a complaint with your local consumer protection agency, the Better Business Bureau, your state Attorney General, or the FTC.

Using Your Cell Phone on Mystery Shops

Making and receiving personal or business calls during a mystery shop is a big no-no. Being on the phone can disrupt the flow of the mystery shop and cause you to miss important observations. However, there are ways your cell phone can help you while performing a mystery shop.

The specific ways you may use a cell phone on a shop will depend on the shop requirements and guidelines. Never do anything that will look out of place or make it obvious that you are the shopper. Because it seems that everyone has a cell phone and they use them everywhere, you can probably use your phone on many of the shops you perform. Of course, if the guidelines say not to use your phone at all during the shop, you should follow the shop guidelines.

If you are not going to use your phone in one of the ways described here, it is best to turn it off completely or not take it with you.

Here are several ideas for how to use your phone on mystery shops.

Record reminders
Record a voice mail or memo to yourself with reminders of what you are to do on the shop. Which departments are you to visit? What timings are you to document? What questions do you need to ask? Play back the recording immediately before performing the shop, or even during the shop to be certain you get all of the information you need.

Record shop notes
Leave yourself a voice mail message or record a voice memo. There are apps available for smart phones the will convert your spoken words to text. Search the app store for "voice to text" to find one for your phone.

Use text messages
Send yourself a text message before the shop with notes about what you need to do during the shop. It is easy to glance at the message during the shop to remind yourself of the mystery shop requirements. You can also send yourself a few quick text messages while you are doing the shop with observations that will go in your report.

Send emails
Many phones allow you to read and send emails. You can use email instead of, or in addition to text messages for reminders and shop notes.

Cover note taking by talking on the phone
Pretend you are getting your voice mail messages or talking to a friend while taking notes. For example, you could be pretending that you are getting driving directions to meet a friend while actually writing down the name of your server, timings, etc.

Get timings
All cell phones show the time, and many have built in stop watches and lap timers. You may be able to use the timer function to get and store necessary timings during the shop.

Take photos
Early cell phone cameras did not have the resolution needed for digital photo shops. Nowadays, cell phones have more advanced cameras. Even if you are not performing a shop where you are required to upload digital photos, you may want to snap a couple of pictures for your own reference as you do the report. When taking photos, make sure you can do so without being observed.

You probably already have a cell phone, so why not use it to make mystery shopping easier?

Repeat customers are crucial for a company to be successful. Let’s face it, customer acquisition is expensive. Selling to a repeat customer is much more cost effective.

One of the most useful ways to gain a competitive advantage and retain customers is to offer stellar customer service. Customer satisfaction has a direct and positive impact on the growth and profitability of a company.

So how can you make your customers resist the competition and remain loyal to you?

1. Change your focus. Shift your attention from your product to your customer.
2. Exceed expectations. Merely satisfying a customer isn’t enough. Knock their socks off by anticipating and meeting their needs before they’re aware they need it.
3. Be realistic. Don’t make promises you can’t deliver, and don’t set expectations you can’t meet.
4. Implement a loyalty program. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program can help you solidify customer loyalty by providing your team with important customer information that will help to identify customer needs and ensure your company’s interactions with customers remain consistent and positive.
5. Hire the right people. Be certain your customer base is being served by a team of exceptionally knowledgeable people who are enthusiastic about your product.Consumers are becoming more demanding than ever. Therefore, you’ve got to deliver more.
6. Listen first. Make sure you understand the needs of the customer before selling a solution.
7. Respond. Make certain that your company is able to promptly and effectively handle customer complaints. Being able to deal with problems as they arise is vital to reducing bad word-of-mouth and retaining your customer base.
8. Do things right the first time. Okay, it’s not a perfect world, so in the case of service failure, make sure you have a service recovery strategy in place. Act fast, apologize, and make sure the customer is more than satisfied with the solution.
9. Care about the customer more than the sale. Show a genuine interest in your customers and let them know you appreciate their business. Enforce this with your employees so that everyone understands the value of customer loyalty and is eager to maintain good customer relationships.
10. Make each customer feel special. Remember their names and the specific products they like. Something as simple as that can make all the difference.

How would your customers rate your team on these 10 items? Are they running to tell their friends about their positive experiences or are they running to your competition. Often the first step toward stellar customer service is to find out where you are now. This information is easily collected through a benchmark customer service survey or mystery shopping program.

Are you ready to hear what your customers are saying about your service delivery?

CIMA Insight provides companies with a solution to close the gap between the promise of service excellence and its actual delivery. CIMA Insight is one of the nation's premier mystery shopping and customer experience measurement companies.

Click here to retain your best customers today.