Mystery Shopping: Catch Employees Doing Things Right

Byron McCann - Credit Union Magazine
March 16, 2005

Mystery shopping—the practice of having undercover “members” gauge and report on various service measures—is a great tool to measure how well employees deliver service. But mystery shopping often has been used to punish, rather than reward, employees, leading to resentment and fear on the part of line employees. Mystery shopping is a type of service audit. It tells managers how well their employees are meeting the credit union’s standards. This is extremely useful information if the standards are meaningful to members.

Front-line employees and managers may perceive mystery shopping as spying or an attempt by upper management to “catch” them giving bad service. All in all, it can be a negative application of a powerful tool.

Here’s a radical idea: If you want to train employees to make members happy, create a culture of member service. This includes incenting employees, not punishing them. Mystery shopping can be the most effective way to connect employees and members. Use mystery shopping to “catch” employees doing things right. They’ll see it as something you’re doing to help them improve themselves.

Mystery shopping is one measurement in an entire member service experience. Member satisfaction surveys, customer relationship management, member service training, and mystery shopping work together to create a culture of service. Put together, these elements become a catalyst for change.

Below are seven steps savvy credit unions will adopt if they want to use mystery shopping to reward the right attitudes, rather than punish against a narrow (and perhaps irrelevant) operational standard. Most importantly, these steps probably will be the most effective way to build the credit union’s brand because brand is built upon members’ experience.

1. Review operating standards. Make sure you’re mystery shopping against what members actually care about. Find out what members want by using focus groups or surveys, or by consulting with service experts who have conducted their own research. Determine if what members care about aligns with how you communicate your brand. If not, review your brand, standards, and member satisfaction drivers.

2. Reward employees. Try awarding bonuses for quarter-to-quarter improvements, rather than docking them for not meeting a specific standard. This requires conducting a blind baseline mystery shop to determine the starting point for measurement. Under no circumstances should you punish employees for information derived from the baseline.

3. Create group goals. By creating group goals for mystery shopping measurements, peer pressure becomes a tool that incents people. Rewarding improvement is just as important as rewarding consistent high scorers.

4. Use mystery shopping with other data. When combined with member surveys and historic transactions, mystery shopping helps create a better picture of how well your credit union delivers a high-quality member experience. Communicate how these measures correlate to service improvement.

5. Obtain employee buy-in. Be completely up front about the program. Assure employees that mystery shopping results will be used as a training and coaching tool, not a punitive instrument. Educate employees about why you mystery shop and how it contributes to the organization’s financial health, hence their job stability. Success enhances job satisfaction.

6. Have employees mystery shop the competition. This way, you’ll see where competitors’ service exceed yours, and you’ll pick up new techniques and ideas to improve your service quality.

7. Hire, train, coach, and reward. This will help you create a member-oriented culture, where mystery shops are welcomed and the feedback is used to create even better member experiences.

Byron McCann is president and CEO of Service Intelligence in Suwanee, Georgia, which helps clients deliver better service experiences by providing performance assessment information. Contact him at 678-513-4776. This story first appeared in Credit Union Magazine at www.creditunionmagazine.com and is reprinted with permission.