With more than 20 years’ experience and over one million customer experiences evaluated, our research has revealed a host of common mistakes financial institutions make when assessing performance and providing coaching to improve frontline service and sales delivery. These errors can render your mystery shopping and customer surveying efforts a total waste of resources.
As I discussed in a previous lesson, sometimes surveys are not the right research instrument for the job. The same applies to mystery shopping. While it can do a lot of great things, it is not the appropriate tool for reaching all objectives. Which research instrument will get the results you’re looking for depends on what you have defined as your strategic objective.
Even if you’ve correctly chosen a mystery shopping strategy for a strategic objective of improving frontline performance, not all mystery shopping programs are created equal. In fact, the vast majority of mystery shopping programs deployed in the industry today are filled with flaws that undermine their effectiveness and rob them of their value. Even if you have the ideal collection of data, it has to inform action that drives frontline change — and that’s where most initiatives ultimately fall apart. As a result, banks and credit unions abandon mystery shopping in favor of surveying, committing the cardinal mistake of assuming surveys can capture the same information and help them improve frontline execution. The RIGHT research approach for achieving this objective is mystery shopping BUT it must be free of flaws.
Reasons for the ineffectiveness of traditional mystery shopping programs fall into two categories: 1) flaws inherent in the design of the mystery shopping program itself, and 2) faulty program implementation. In this lesson, we’ll look at the former, to discover what built-in or design characteristics of a mystery shopping program can make it ill-suited to help you improve your frontline execution and transform your culture. As we examine these flaws, we’ll contrast an ineffective methodology with a mystery shopping program properly designed for achieving these objectives.
Flaw #1) Home-Grown Shopping Approach vs Solid, Proven, Science-Based Methodology
Often, a financial institution will attempt to create, deploy and implement their own internally designed mystery shopping program as a way to save costs. In all likelihood, the designers of such an internal program do not have the formal education or research experience necessary to develop a scientifically-sound and statistically reliable method for gathering data. In the best-case scenario, this approach represents a waste of time and financial resources — and in the worst, incomplete and inaccurate data that leads to incomplete and inaccurate decisions. At the same time, ad hoc internally designed initiatives tend to trigger mistrust, defensiveness and skepticism on the part of your employees. In contrast, feedback data captured by an instrument built on a solid foundation of proven, science-based, multi-dimensional research methodology has real reliability and provides valuable insights you can count on.
Flaw #2) Generic Checklists vs Customized Evaluations
A “one-size-fits-all” approach to mystery shopping will fail to capture what makes your organization unique, and that can’t help you reach your objectives. There is a big difference between a retail mystery shopping research program for, say, Burger King or Nordstrom’s, and the unique way a financial institution must execute across all channels — and specifically for financial services. You need a program that starts with defining your objective. If that objective is to transform your CX culture by strengthening frontline execution in financial services, you need a measurement instrument designed to that end – providing comprehensive and relevant feedback specifically evaluating financial service behaviors. That includes knowing what those behaviors should look like, sound like and feel like in frontline execution.
Flaw #3) External Shoppers vs Customer-Evaluators
Most banks and credit unions choose mystery shopping programs that rely on “outsiders” (i.e., third-party shoppers) — or worse yet, the financial institution uses its own employees. But especially in a bank or credit union setting, it is easy for employees to spot the “hired-gun” shoppers and adjust their behavior accordingly. When an employee is performing for a shopper, you will likely get great scores, but you’re not going to learn the truth you need to change the culture. On the other hand, when you partner with and equip a large team of your own customers — representative of the full range of demographics and channel users — to conduct the evaluation, there is less risk of false data resulting from an employee “playing to” a shopper. Moreover, shoppers who are your customers (your team of Customer-Evaluators) have a vested interest in improving your bank or credit union. Their commitment to the task of providing honest feedback and thorough evaluations based on your brand’s service and sales standards trumps all efforts of an outside “professional shopper” entering the branch.
Flaw #4) Poorly Trained Shoppers vs Expert Customer-Evaluators
It’s easy to just give a shopper a survey or assessment form and ask for their feedback — but this is not a time or an initiative for gathering reflective opinions, random perceptions or subjective scores. Well-trained expert Customer-Evaluators know exactly what they are looking for … they know the bank or credit union’s brand standards of service delivery expected of its employees. As a result, they are not focused on opinions, perceptions or feelings-based scores. Instead, they’re evaluating and reporting their objective findings on the exact behaviors observed and experienced in a real interaction with your frontline.
Flaw #5) Focusing on Abstract Experiences vs Concrete Behaviors
Rather than gathering subjective feedback on abstract experiences, effecting change at the behavioral level requires detailed information about specific, concrete behaviors. This is the only way to identify the exact skills an employee needs to work on to improve their frontline delivery.
Flaw #6) Raw Data vs Systematic Quality Audit
Most mystery shopping programs make do with whatever raw data is captured. Human nature being what it is, you’re going to get instances where the employee is misidentified or the information reveals the shopper’s identity. A mystery shopping program dedicated to reliable data examines every assessment for accuracy and consistency as it comes in, investigating and clarifying all discrepancies. There must be an exhaustive audit system in place to filter out those elements that could invalidate the data. Without this quality-control component, employees will question the credibility of the program – opening the door to intense pushback from those being evaluated. And who could blame them?
Flaw #7) Interesting Information vs Actionable Analytics
Many mystery shopping programs just deliver the collected data, usually once a month or as it is collected. Then what? Legendary management consultant Peter Drucker famously said, “What gets measured, gets improved.” Well, I am here to tell you this is only a half-truth. I have respectfully edited this quote to: “What gets measured correctly AND acted upon appropriately – gets improved.” If you don’t have any idea how to make use of the captured data, you’re just collecting interesting information. An effective mystery shopping program presents the data in a powerful yet relevant way that enables you to pinpoint performance gaps at the behavioral level. Then it identifies action steps to take to close the gaps.
Flaw #8) Service-Only Feedback vs Service AND Sales Skill Building
“Sales” is something of a cringe-inducing word with many on the frontline. It’s generally approached either tenuously or like a wrecking ball when being introduced as a frontline responsibility. An effective mystery shopping program treats sales as a natural extension of service: the next step after having a foundation of building relationships with customers is actually deepening relationships with customers. Service is a springboard to sales. That is the true test of service: Are you actually deepening relationships, and are you able to measure this dynamic? You should be. In fact, you must be in order to determine an authentic ROI – increased revenue and customer loyalty.
Flaw #9) Superficial Noise vs. Transformative Coaching
It’s better not to have a program at all than to have a bad one, because a bad one aggravates employees and wreaks havoc within an organization. A massive pile of data of questionable scope and accuracy, poorly interpreted and marginally understood is likely to be abandoned altogether or translated into incorrect actions. All you’ve done is made lots of noise that distracts and frustrates employees.
There are right methods and very wrong methods for how managers use mystery shopping performance data. If these clear and concise best-in-class practices are not an inherent part of the program, it will simply not be long lived and you will have wasted a lot of time, money and effort. A correctly structured mystery shopping program clearly aligns to the organization’s objectives and equips managers to transform their teams.
Flaw #10) General Instruction vs. Transformative Skill-Building Techniques
Many financial institutions mistakenly use the results of a mystery shopping program to identify and eliminate poor performers, leveraging the program as a policing endeavor rather than a developmental strategy. Those that do try to use the feedback for improving frontline performance are often limited to providing general training since the mystery shopping data was too general.
When you think mystery shopping, think Skill Building! The true desired outcome of mystery shopping research is to build a frontline team that consistently delivers experiences that meet your brand standards and strengthen relationships with your customers. To do that, you must focus on developing specific skills at the individual and team levels and equip your managers to provide appropriate training and coaching in the actual environment.
Additionally, your actual boots-on-the-ground, nearest-to-the-customer folks need to be equipped – not just measured! With every skill or behavior they are struggling to demonstrate (let alone master), they need an instant and powerful on-demand way to IDENTIFY their skill gap, know WHY the skill matters, HOW to practice it and WHAT it actually sounds like in the live environment. You leave this out, and you have only half a CX program.
If the flaws covered above are designed into your mystery shopping program, you simply won’t reach your objective of strong frontline execution even if the program is implemented exactly as designed. But remember: when you are faced with less-than-expected results, the solution is NOT to turn to a survey, since surveys never lead to skill building. The solution is to stay with — or return to — a mystery shopping instrument BUT CHOOSE ONE that is designed and structured properly, and then implement it appropriately to ensure effectiveness.
That is where we’ll focus our attention in our next lesson, as we look at the mistakes in execution that can derail even a mystery shopping program of sound design.
