Mystery shopping your agency
When did you last ‘mystery shop’ your own business? Either do this yourself, or get a friend to do it.
In the eighties this was a terribly trendy thing to do in the UK. As the US became the ‘land of customer service’ where people bent over backwards to give great service to their clients and customers and the UK looked increasingly like a back-water. It’s rather fallen out of favour these days. But I think it’s time for a revival - ONLINE Mystery Shopping.
Seven things you can do to research your company’s customer interface
- Do online research into your brand, company name, key individuals (remember to also get behind the login firewall for key print media e.g. FT.com, the Economist, Brand Republic, trade journals) and social media sites
- Check out all the negative search phrases as well as brand names ( XYZ sucks, XYZ hell)
- Go to the key websites for bad customer experiences Ripoff Report, Blagger, Grumbletext,
- Phone into a series of offices - at 5 pm on a Friday and during your Monday morning meeting
- Ask for a reference on your business and see who you speak to and what they say
- Buy online (if possible)
- Ask about privacy policy and what data is stored on you (and if you don’t get a coherent answer quickly on this one, sort it out quickly)
Tags: business development, find new customers, mystery shopping