The Evolution of Mystery Guest Reports

15 years ago, mystery guest reports were very much about ticking boxes:

 

‘Was cutlery delivered on a tray?’ ✅

 ‘Was your beer set down with the label facing you?’ ✅

‘Were you offered coffee?’ ✅

 

Then, the nitty gritty, protocols became more relaxed, and the mystery guest reports became more about engagement and subjectivity, focussing on how customers were made to feel:

 

‘How did you rate the food/service/ambiance? Please explain’. 💯

 

Subjective questions are not always easy to validate with a score but the narrative gives a sense of reality and denotes the truth of how that customer (and others) felt, against their expectations.

 

 

Recently, we have had push-back from these types of open and subjective questions from both new and existing clients using our mystery guest services, asking to leave them unscored or to omit them totally.

 
Conversely, the internationally recognised NPS score, a completely subjective score based on whether a customer would rave about you rant about you, or, more often than not, feel nothing either way, has been making a comeback.

So, are we seeing a backtrack to mystery shopping focusing on benchmarking protocol instead of drilling down into sentiment?

 

 

With so much competition and running costs at panic levels, I can see why companies are looking into dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s so it remains to be seen whether the customers will give their standing ovations for faultless service or human interaction.

Contact us to find out what you don’t know AND what you don’t want to know, but need to know! 🤔 info@thesilentcustomer.com

What is an NPS score? Find our more HERE.

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Engaging Conversations

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

Positive Body Language

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Relevant Recommendations

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