Consider this fact, 69% of customers discontinue their patronage of an establishment due to poor customer service. That's far and away the number one reason! Add to this the fact that unhappy customers tell 10 other people about their poor experience (who in turn pass the word along as well). This can spell disaster for an already struggling business.

Given that it costs 5-10 times more to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one, it's surprising that more companies don't pull out all the stops to make sure that they're meeting and exceeding customer expectations. To ensure this, it's important to use all the tools you can to uncover poor service before it becomes a problem. This includes the use of mystery shopping in addition to other customer feedback tools.

Why mystery shopping? Here's what we think. A highly satisfied customer is much more likely to buy again than one who is merely satisfied. (Harvard Business Review "Why Satisfied Customers Defect"). However, over 75% of customers that switch to another company had previously rated themselves as satisfied or very satisfied. ("The Myth of the Satisfied Customer", Ron Zemke and Chip Bell, CRM Magazine - August 2002) What this suggests is that traditional customer satisfaction measurements alone don't tell the whole story.

Mystery shops can fill in the gaps and look at your operation from a different perspective. Mystery shops can assess areas and procedures that may go unnoticed by customers or guests on a regular basis. Mystery shops are more targeted, objective, and quantifiable.

According to Tom Peters in his book In Search of Excellence, "What gets measured, gets done." This likely demonstrates the impact of the Hawthorne effect where people work differently (better) when they know they are being monitored. With an ongoing mystery shopping program, sales associates and employees know that any customer (coming through the door, on the phone, or over the Internet) could be a secret shopper, so their performance level remains elevated.

Why consider mystery shopping? Quite simply, it works. Our client partners continue to report success stories based on the impact of the mystery shopping programs we're conducting with them, including Telephone Mystery Shopping.

Why not invest in a pilot test of a mystery shopping programme to see what it can do for your business? You'll see, like others have, that the investment more than pays for itself. The only reason not to try it out is if you have more business than you can handle. Is anyone ever in that situation? Go ahead. Give it a try.

Mystery customer evaluation team.