8 ways to discuss mystery shoppers’ reports with employees
One of the most important benefits of mystery shopping reports is that it gives you feedback about staff performance.
You can use this piece of information to make decisions for your staff needs such as:
- Further training
- Not complying with training given to them
- Need some minor instructions to better understand their job description
- Motivation
- Rewarding
- Deductions
And in some cases, these reports give you insights on the employees who have a negative impact on your business and need to be released.
The way of discussing these reports with your employees is very important to your business, as the employee has to fully understand these comments and enhance his/her performance accordingly for the sake of your business.
Here are some recommendations on how you can clearly discuss mystery shopping reports with employees.
In-person one to one
One of the best ways is to meet with your employees one to one to discuss mystery shoppers’ reports results. If an employee does not score well, managers need to coach and guide the employee privately. They can discuss ways to improve the customer’s experience and also understand the employee’s concerns with any of the mystery shopper’s comments.
Mystery shopping reports are normally emailed to you classified by shift time, venue, date of performance, duration and the positive and negative points of staff performance, which enables managers to specify who is the person responsible for this performance. Management can email the report to the concerned employee highlighting the positive and negative areas of performance and give recommendations on what the employee can do to improve their performance.
Staff meetings
In some cases management can find, according to mystery shopping reports, that negative performance is not coming out from only one employee but from a group of employees in different units or the same unit in the organization. This will need staff meetings with units’ heads to brainstorm a solution to this common negative performance, for example, decide that the employees need certain training or staff meeting with the employees to know why they are doing this action and give them the needed guidance.
Company events
In the company’s events like team meetings, company’s anniversary events or annual company’s dinner it is nice to recognize employees with high score positive performance according to mystery shopping reports. It is motivating for current successful employees and for other employees to look forward to being recognized next year.
Interviews
Managers can communicate the company’s expectations and detailed requirements upfront for job candidates, also inform them about the ongoing mystery shopping audit performed on the company’s employees to maintain high performance of staff instead of waiting for new employees to make common mistakes.
New employees training
In new employees, training management should explain the process of the mystery shopping
- Why it is done?
- What is expected from employees for customer service?
- What are they being audited for?
- Examples of reports results
New Managers training
In new managers, training higher management should explain
- Types of mystery shopping services used (onsite mystery shopping, telephone mystery shopping or video mystery shopping)
- How often is this process done?
- What is expected out of the mystery shopping service?
- How to interpret information out of mystery shopping reports?
- What are the actions and decisions expected to be taken with employees according to reports?
- How to communicate results with employees?
- How to improve service for customers?
Ongoing training
Mystery shopping service reflects the performance of a company’s standards by its employees, and thus its results need to be embedded in the ongoing training programs for employees. Including the weak points reported about your staff by mystery shopping service will make the training more relevant and consistent.