Ensuring Safety Excellence: The Role of Mystery Shopping in Recognizing Accessibility Measures

You go somewhere with your loved one who, being a differently abled person, uses a wheelchair. Now, that place does not have a single ramp using which your loved one can get inside. So what kind of an experience will it be for you or your loved one? Absolutely bad. 

Now what if you are the owner of the place and the same happens with your customers daily? It is not a good thing and you should be doing something to solve it. However, the problem lies in identifying the areas of improvement so that the changes can be made. 

Those problems can be identified and solved with mystery shopping services. It is a service that helps businesses learn about the flaws in their business that are at the forefront and deal directly with the customers. 

For example, your physical store, online store, and customer support service are some of the areas where these services can help you to make improvements. At the center of this service are the mystery auditors, who are trained professionals to audit stores and services for brands. 

So, let's know about how mystery audit works for your business to make it more secure and accessible in detail. 

Why Is Ensuring Accessibility and Safety Important for Businesses?

Accessibility is an integral part of business and also a key component of turning a company into a brand. Safety and accessibility are two of the main decision-making parameters in almost every industry. 

If we particularly look at hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, or any other business the need for safety-ensuring features is really very important. Let's take the shopping mall for example. 

There are a lot of visitors in the shopping mall daily which is why there's a high chance that a differently abled person may come in, right? So, in this case, is the shopping mall optimized so that it can ensure the accessibility and safety of individuals who use wheelchairs? To deal with this, the mall should have lifts and special entrances and exits for such people. 

Similarly, if there's a blind person, will he/she be able to navigate through your mall, restaurant, or hotel? In this case, the result of not having precautionary measures can be more dangerous like the blind person may roll down the stairs. So, it's important to have braille text on the premises to help them out. There are many other accessibility measures as well which can ensure not only the safety of your customers but also enhance customer satisfaction. 

Now, you may wonder what these safety and accessibility measures have to do with customer satisfaction. As we discussed above safety measures can easily be a part of decision-making parameters. The reason behind it is that everyone loves their life and by ensuring their safety you also contribute to making their life safer. Hence, they believe that you are the one who can be trusted in terms of safety and make a deal like going to your mall, eating at your restaurant, or staying at your hotel. 

However, just installing a few safety and accessibility devices wouldn't work until you don't have a compatible staff. The implementation of the safety features also needs the active contribution of the staff. 

For example, at many restaurants, there are extinguishers installed, but in case of an emergency, it is found that the extinguishers are expired. So how can you make sure that your place is safe for your customers at any point in time? The solution is mystery or secret shopping. 

How Does Mystery Shopping Help in Recognizing Accessibility Measures?

Opting for mystery shopping in India is a great way to get your business audited irrespective of the business you are running. 

It allows you to figure out the customer’s POV and the spots where you are not able to provide your best. In this service, a mystery auditor visits your business without letting your staff know that an audit is going on to ignore human biases. 

It includes two parts. The first is when the auditor visits your place to do the secret auditing. He is a professional trained to look at every single thing on the premises. From the basic amenities to the most important safety features, he looks at everything. 

Then, there's the second part of the mystery shopping program which is the report. Once the auditor is done with the audit, he/she gives a detailed report in a structured format about the premises. Here's how secret shopping services work for different businesses like restaurants, malls, and hotels. 

Let’s take these three businesses as examples: