Blogs & Insight

Discover the latest thought leadership from the worlds of mystery dining and reputation management.

Mystery Dining Assessments – How Does it Work?

If you’re thinking about running some mystery dining assessments but you’re not sure what that looks like. Read on! Mystery dining assessments run in a similar way to mystery shopper, but they are usually run by hospitality specialists like Silent Customer.  A brief is created for the mystery diners so they know what they must look out for and feedback on, and a detailed survey, with up to 100 questions, is created to reflect that.

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What Makes a Good Mystery Shopping Company?

Mystery shopping companies are similar in the basic mechanics of how they function. They have a chunky, complex, software platform that matches mystery shoppers by location and appropriateness to the specific assessments. Then it collects a tone of data and enables the clients to drill into it from a myriad of different perspectives.       All mystery shopping software allows the client to benchmark their organisation geographically and by management level. All mystery shopping

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Why Use Mystery Dining Companies for your Hospitality Business

Why use mystery dining companies for your hospitality business? I have lived in my hometown of Henley on Thames for 20 years. In that time, I have got to know every pub extremely well within a 5-mile radius. Although tenants come and go, many of them know me in person and what I do for a living, not least because Silent Customer assessed Brakspear pubs with our mystery dining services for over a decade.  

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Guide to Secret Shoppers and Mystery Shopping

Guide to Secret Shoppers and Mystery Shopping So you want to find out what is going on in your service led business while you are not around? Thinking about taking on a mystery guest company but don’t know where to start?     What is mystery shopping? Simply, mystery shopping is where a member of the public acts as a secret shopper and covertly visits a business to give their unbiased feedback. This feedback is delivered on a

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What is Mystery Shopping?

What is Mystery Shopping? In this blog, Janet Wood, Founder and Director of Silent Customer, answers questions about mystery shopping and what makes Silent Customer stand out in the Hospitality industry.      What Do You Do? The most common question I get asked is: ‘What do you do?’. My answer to this is with another question: ‘Do you know what mystery shopping is?’. 16 years ago, when I started Silent Customer, I was told

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What Does A Secret Shopper Do?

Mystery shopping companies have always struggled with the editing of poorly written reports. Indeed, by way of trying to raise these standards, Silent Customer gives feedback and grades our mystery guests on writing style, objective feedback, grammar, and spelling. We check all submitted reports twice. So, what about using AI as a tool for mystery shoppers?

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Intercepting Complaints

Check-backs and complaint handling go hand in hand. Intercepting a problem before a customer tells you, or Google, not only prevents negative word-of-mouth but can increase revenue through loyalty and positive PR.

Use our fun PEP talk sheets to support your front-line teams in learning how to avoid complaints.

Engaging Conversations

Building a natural and genuine rapport with guests can be the most positive and memorable part of their dining experience. Whilst the food and the environment can be remarkable by itself, making a customer feel that they are more than just a table number, has a far wider reach in terms of spreading positive word-of-mouth.

Use our fun PEP talk sheet to support your front-line teams in learning how to have engaging conversations.

Positive Body Language

Being able to communicate positivity, and with enthusiasm, encourages customers to reciprocate in the same manner. However, most of us are unaware of how we are perceived by others and, whilst we may think we are coming across as welcoming and friendly, our body language could be telling a different story.

Use our fun PEP talk sheet to support your front-line teams in understand the importance of self-awareness.

Relevant Recommendations

Team members need good product knowledge to be able to describe and enthuse, but often don’t know what many of the dishes taste like. A lack of upselling is also often due to a lack of confidence in knowing where to start a conversation that leads to a recommendation.

Use our fun PEP talk sheet to support your front-line teams in learning how to upsell.