A Complete Guide to Guard Your Brand Reputation with Mystery Shopping

BY QDegreesPUBLISHED
Dec. 20, 2024

A brand's reputation is a metric to estimate the popularity of the brand. The better a brand's reputation, the more popular it will be. But there's a problem. What's that?

The problem is that brand reputation is built on so many things that you can't even imagine what might be demolishing it. It could be the way your staff deals with your customers, the appearance of the store, or many small but important things.

So, how to deal with it? The answer is mystery shopping. It is a service that has the potential to help you identify minor to major issues causing harm to your brand reputation. So let's look at 10 steps of guarding your brand reputation with mystery shopping.

Ten Steps to Guard Your Brand Reputation with Mystery Shopping

Choose the Right Mystery Shopping Partner

Mystery shopping is a skill that mandates you to onboard experts for assessment. If you don't do so, it leads to an improper evaluation due to a lack of expertise like attention to detail and an understanding of what things must be looked at. So, what's the solution? The solution is to hire a good mystery shopper provider. Many companies offer mystery shopping services and you must look for such companies. Not only do they provide you with experienced mystery shoppers but also create a detailed map of what factors matter for your business and brand which must be assessed.

Pro Tip - Choose a company with relevant experience in mystery shopping in your industry.

Have Clear Goals and Objectives

When it comes to creating a mystery shopping program, a very important point or step is to set clear goals and objectives. You should be very clear about what you need to know about your brand or business which affects your customer experience. There can be individual problems that can lead to a lack of business performance. So, you must take all these factors to the table and let the mystery shopping provider know about it like we aren't getting sales, customers don't spend much time in your store, etc.

Develop a Detailed Evaluation Criteria

Sometimes what happens is that employees find loopholes in the administrative system. For instance, they act very professionally in front of the manager or supervisor following every rule and regulation, but as soon as they find that there's no supervision, their behavior might change. So, that's an issue that you may never find out on your own. But a mystery shopper can find out such hidden issues with their experience and expertise.

Test Your Marketing Strategies

Many businesses do not know about it, but mystery shopping can even help you with marketing programs. Yes, and the reason is that ultimately a marketing program targets your potential customers. Hence a mystery shopper can tell you about the effectiveness of the marketing program like will it work or why didn't it work?

Be Consistent with Mystery Shopping

Another step that is important to your brand reputation is to be regular and consistent with your mystery shopping practices. Mystery shopping must be done at regular intervals because it looks at factors that can go out of hand anytime like the cleanliness of the store, staff's helpfulness, their attitude, sales practices, etc.

Create Ongoing Training and Support Programs

But let's also agree on that, sometimes the problem can be lack of training. Like, if an employee works in a company, they must be told about the ethics which you might tell all in one day, but can't expect them to learn all in one go. So, with mystery shopping service, you can effectively find the gaps that are still there and train your employees for the same.

Identify and Take Advantage of Pros

And if by any chance you think that mystery shopping is all about finding the cons, that's not true. It also tells you about the pros of your business which you can benefit from. Also, it tells you about the employees and the characteristics of the employees that are helping you with your branding. And to retain these characteristics you can reward them for what they do well.

Make Adjustments to the Strategies

Apart from everything mentioned till now, a key step to secure your brand reputation is to be consistent at delivering the best. Be it your marketing program, product/service, or customer service, make sure that everything is going perfectly with different types of mystery shopping. It will help you make adjustments to your strategies for marketing, sales, customer service, etc in real-time.

Act on Feedback

The mystery shopping results are not to sit in a corner realizing your mistakes. They are actually to act on. So whatever feedback you get, ensure to create the best possible plan for it and execute it. If you get to know that people aren't staying long in your store because they find it hard to navigate, then create a new strategy for the store's appearance and navigation.

Talk About the Results Internally

Last but not least, communicate the results with your employees. It's important because even when you can create a strategy to fix any problem, you can't customize the strategy for everyone working in your business. Hence, sharing the results internally allows employees to fix things on their end.

QDegrees’ Role as the Best Mystery Shopping Service Provider

If you are looking for a mystery shopper for your business but have no idea about how to get one and what to expect, then you are at the right place. We at QDegrees offer a comprehensive mystery shopping program where we manage everything from sending our trained mystery to your stores, collecting their feedback, and providing you with actionable insights.

And what makes us better than others is our dedication to helping businesses to survive in today's competitive landscape. With our mystery shippers trained industry-wise, we offer the most customizable mystery shopping service ever. So, let's come together to make you the leader in your industry.