Earlier this year, back before the start of the lockdowns and the social distancing, we posted an article about the importance of Mystery Shopping for Compliance. In it, we described how critical it is for businesses to ensure their employees are obeying the laws governing the sale of age-restricted products or following the codes that cover cleanliness standards. These concerns have been a part of the process of doing business for decades.
New Concerns
Now that we’re all living through a pandemic, however, we’re all facing a bevy of new state-issued executive orders meant to curtail the spread of the coronavirus. Moreover, many customers now have similar expectations about the enforcement of social distancing, facemask use, and occupancy limits—even resorting to filing complaints with their local jurisdictions when they observe non-compliance at the businesses they frequent. No one wants to feel uncomfortable or endangered when out and about.
So, as much of the country has begun reopening, we must all find a way to navigate these requirements. Failure to do so could result in fines or even shutdowns, and we certainly don’t want to see our businesses’ reputations tarnished by accusations that our stores and restaurants are unsafe because we’re not following the rules. Posting signs about social distancing, using floor markers to instruct people where to stand, monitoring the number of simultaneous visitors, as well as providing employees with facemasks and cleaning supplies are all important steps to showing the level of care necessary to allay the concerns of the local regulators and your clientele.
The Best Answer
But the next step is mystery shopping for public-safety compliance. Just as shoppers have done for years regarding general cleanliness, they now take mental notes about how well employees are executing on these COVID–19 precautions. And we all know this isn’t easy: after all, this is uncharted territory for most of us. Even without realizing it, many of us are pulling down our facemasks when talking to others, forgetting to wash our hands after touching objects in public, and failing to stand six-feet apart. It’s a pain point we all share, which is why it’s so important that we test and retest our frontline workers.
Remember well, however, that our mystery shops are never gotchas, never meant to chastise employees for being imperfect. These observations are made because it’s far better for us to let you know about a problem now than to let a customer complain or have an inspector show up with a citation later.
The Big Question
Have you begun mystery shopping your business for COVID–19 safety?
If not, reach out to us today and we’ll help you create an audit that not only covers the standards you want to see enforced in your company, but also monitor all the other important factors that we always have: customer service, merchandising, salesmanship, and more. Let’s keep your business healthy, both figuratively and literally!
