As we’ve discussed in earlier posts, self-scouting is hugely important to identifying your business’s strengths and weaknesses. Without a doubt, that’s the baseline, foundational exercise every business owner should engage in regularly. But there’s another critical dimension you can investigate, which will provide you with something just as important: context.
Mystery shopping, as you know, allows businesses to target different facets of their day-to-day operations, including customer service, product selection, store layout and cleanliness, and so on. Again, the self-scouting this provides is invaluable. But did you know that you can turn that same critical lens to your competition? That’s what we call competitive mystery shopping.
A mystery shopping company can send the same shopper into two businesses and do a critical comparison. You can ask the same questions of both places of course, like, “Did you feel welcomed by the staff?” or “Was the showroom’s layout easy to understand?” But you can also ask, “Which location would you buy from?” and “Why would you choose to buy from that location?”
Perhaps a competitor has been surging recently—a competitive mystery shop can uncover why that is so you know how to adapt. Or, turned around, maybe that competitor has really taken a nosedive recently. Learning why could save your own business the grief of trying the wrong thing.
This doesn’t just apply to physical, on-location mystery shops either. Competitive mystery shopping can work with telephone mystery shops as well, allowing you to gauge how your business handles over-the-phone support or sales. A competitive phone shop can uncover who has the easier to navigate automated phone-tree, for example, or whose staff is best at being friendly and the most capable of finding answers quickly and accurately. Questions like how well a call center staff handles difficult customers can be answered as well.
All of this extends to the web, too. Many businesses have created digital storefronts and added sales and support staff who communicate through a live-chat box on the website. If your business has done this, competitive mystery shopping can analyze that, too. In truth, there’s no facet of mystery shopping that can’t benefit from competitive analysis.
Competitive mystery shopping is one of many tools The Brandt Group offers to help your business with profit enhancement, customer loyalty, and long-term growth. To learn more, contact us today.
