Four Services, Four Unique Perspectives, One Online Dashboard

Leveraging the Missed Report for Your Mystery Shop Program

How Taking Images During a Mystery Shop Can Help You Gain Insight

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Today, we’d like to present another feature that has become increasingly popular lately: the ability for client dashboard users to be granted editing rights for their mystery shop reports. While we take great pride in our Quality Assurance process for internally reviewing every shop report submitted, there may be some differences of opinion from time to time regarding the scoring for certain questions on a report. Clients always have the option to contact us in those situations to have reports rescored, but we also can allow clients to make these changes on their own if they desire.

If you are interested in testing out this feature for your program, just email our Client Help Desk team at clienthelpdesk@360-relay.com and let us know which users should be granted access. We can restrict access by certain questions on the form or keep it open for every question. Once given access, just log into the dashboard and pull up the ‘responses’ page under the ‘mystery shop’ dropdown. You will notice a little pencil icon over to the right of each shop. By clicking this icon, you will enter the editing view and be able to make any adjustments that you’d like. From there, click save to update the report.

As always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions about this dashboard feature or any others!

The post Dashboard Feature Spotlight: Editing Rights appeared first on Retail Audit Pro.

*Question Set

The questions on your form are the top priority in the formation of your shop template. Think about what you are looking to measure; steps of service, service timing, product and food quality, cleanliness, management presence, etc. – whatever it is that made you decide to put a shop program in place in the first place. Identify what you are focusing on in your staff training and what you want to hold them accountable to.

*Question Phrasing

The way you phrase the questions is also important; while you may have internal verbiage that makes sense to you and your team, you want to word the questions in a way that will make sense to the shopper. You also want to be as definitive as possible. For example, don’t just ask, ‘Was your food delivered in a timely manner’; define what timely means to you and your team, ‘Was your food delivered within eight minutes’.

*Question Types and Answer Options

The majority of questions on your shop’s form should be objective; questions that have a definitive answer and don’t involve opinion. We recommend having a few subjective questions within your form as the comments can provide actionable feedback, but only placing scores on questions that don’t involve a shopper’s opinion. This aids in consistent scoring across your shops, which makes the data and reporting steadier and more reliable. It’s also important to think about answer options; if it’s a black-and-white question, you should use a Yes|No or Agree|Disagree scale. For questions with the potential for some grey area, you should use a sliding scale such as 1-5, or Agree|Somewhat Agree|Neutral|Somewhat Disagree|Disagree.

*Comments

Text responses provide great feedback; our recommendation is to always force a comment when a question is answered negatively, and to always include a summary at the end of each section which provides a short narrative covering all the questions asked in a given section.

*Scoring and Weighting

We recommend focusing on what’s most important to your business and your brand and making those questions worth more of the overall score. Our scoring system works as an overall average of points achieved divided by the points possible, not an average of averages, meaning that the individual point values are not as important as the weighting scale that you choose.

*Photos and other Attachments

Most of our clients take advantage of the photo attachment feature within the system. If you choose to require photos for your shops, it’s important to let us know exactly how we should instruct our shoppers to take the photos; from what angle, what depth perception, what size, etc.

While it can take a few rounds of revisions to get the template set up correctly, it is time well spent to ensure your form is set up to capture the exact data and feedback that is most important to your business. We are always willing to make changes along the way, and we understand that the focus of the shop may change.  However, we do recommend keeping the form as consistent as possible as it’s much more valuable to track the same data points month after month versus constantly changing the data set you are evaluating. There are a lot of factors that go into getting your template set up for success, and as always, our client team is here to assist in whatever way they can.

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Quality Assurance is one of the most vital pieces of the mystery shop process. Every single shop that comes through our system is touched by a quality assurance representative before the report is delivered to the end user.  We have built a team of editors who work seven days a week to ensure that shop reports are being sent to our clients within a 24-hour timeframe from when they are submitted.

Our team of editors is trained to look out for myriad things when they are reviewing and assessing shop reports. Those items include:

• Shop Validity: Ensuring that the shopper has visited the location they were assigned, purchased the required items, tipped appropriately if applicable, conducted the shop on the assigned date and within the allotted timeframe and followed all basic instructions and guidelines outlined in the shop details. They do this by verifying a legitimate receipt which needs to include all of these pertinent details.

• Grammar and spelling: Our editors comb through each report to ensure the reports are grammatically sound, are written in the past tense, and that proper sentence structure is used throughout the report.

• Score and Comment Agreement: The comments written throughout a shop report must reflect the answers and scores the shopper has logged. Our editors ensure that any score, and specifically any negative experience, is properly explained within the report and thus our editors are checking for any inconsistencies or contradictions.

• Quality Narratives: Our editors read each comment within a report to ensure that the final product will make sense to the client receiving it. While we never change the sentiment of what our shoppers are stating occurred on their shop, we do take the step of rewording it in a different way to make sure it’s clear and provides appropriate constructive feedback.

• Photo and File Authenticity: The software system that houses all of our mystery shop data has a built-in fraud checker that catches the vast majority of any falsified photo and receipt attachments. Our editors take the extra step of looking into these fraud alerts to ensure that the client doesn’t receive anything that appears questionable.

Our quality assurance reps work directly with shoppers in regard to missing data or discrepancies within their shop reports and provide hard deadlines to resubmit if something is amiss with their report. When a shopper has not performed a shop correctly, or up to our standard, we decline the report and note the shopper’s account. If a shopper consistently fails to complete shops properly, we deactivate them from our system so that they are no longer eligible for shops with our company.

At the end of the day, the main objective for our quality assurance team is to ensure that the reports we deliver to our clients add value to their business. Our clients need to have trust and confidence in what we are delivering to them, and the quality assurance team is a key piece of the process that makes that possible.

The post Quality Assurance Process appeared first on Retail Audit Pro.

The first step is a discovery call with our President, Kurt Eddins, to determine your program goals and spec out what you want the shops to look like. From there, you will receive a proposal with a full breakdown of the pricing and schedule as well as our deliverables and terms under the agreement. You may also schedule a follow-up meeting with him to review the proposal and receive a live demo of the reporting dashboard as well.

Once the proposal is agreed upon and signed, there are several key items that need to be reviewed and taken care of before we can begin to post shops:

1. Report templates – You will be provided with standard templates for your industry that you may mark up with changes (either on paper and scanned or within Excel, Adobe, etc.) and send back to us. Our team will then make the requested changes and send them back to you for final approval.
2. Locations – We need the addresses, phone numbers, and preferred names for all locations, as well as any hierarchy associated (regions, districts, etc.)
3. Users – Who would you like to receive the emailed shop reports for which location(s)? We can also give people access to the dashboard without receiving the emails.
4. Invoice recipient(s) – We can include up to 2 people on the monthly invoice emails.
5. Payment method – We accept checks as well as automatic credit card or ACH processing. For smaller groups, we can accommodate billing for each location if necessary.
6. Start date – Give us the final green light to begin!

Once we have everything finalized, our Client Help Desk team will officially “post” the first round of shops to the system. Typically, you will have your first shop completed within a week or two, depending on the shop type and location. This is what happens next from there:

1. Kurt will follow up with you to ensure you received the first report and make sure it didn’t go to your spam or junk folder (this happens periodically).
2. At this time, you will also be provided with your login information to the dashboard and our user guide so you can begin to navigate your way around.
3. Shop report emails come from clienthelpdesk@360-relay.com – This is also a shared inbox internally for our team, so please feel free to respond directly to this email with questions or day-to-day needs related to the program.
4. You may communicate with Kurt regarding partnership-level concerns or questions about the pricing or agreement. If you reach out to him directly requesting template changes, new users to be added, or things along these lines, he will likely forward your message to the Client Help Desk for resolution. As long as all details are provided, your request will be handled very quickly.

We take immense pride in the support we provide for all clients. Our focus is always on flexibility, transparency, speed, and quality to ensure that you are receiving the maximum return on investment from your program with us.

Successful onboarding requires good communication and involvement from both parties – After a month or two shops, you may see that changes are needed. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions in this process.

The post Client Onboarding: What to Expect appeared first on Retail Audit Pro.

At Retail Audit Pro, we’ve seen a wide variety of approaches when it comes to taking the data and leveraging it for growth and success. You can implement bonus and training programs based on the shop scores and create company buy-in using other methods as well.

In this post, we’d like to focus on a specific feature that is available within our reporting dashboard (at no additional cost) that can be used to generate follow-up actions based on individual reports: The Compliance Module

The compliance module is an optional tool that can be toggled on and off in your program by communicating with our team. Here’s how it works:

• Once a report is approved that needs action – log in to Dashboard >> Hover over Mystery Shop >> Select COMPLIANCE
• Reports that require action or follow-up are indicated by a RED X
• Use the EYE ICON to select the report needing a comment
• Under the Section Scores on the report you are viewing, any assigned users can comment on the next steps. When a comment is added, it will send a message to everyone on the report distribution.
• Others can participate in the exchange and once Management is satisfied that the proper actions have been taken, they can click Clear Compliance Requirement and change the icon to Green.

This tool gives our clients the ability to create tasks for their team and track them until they are resolved. Whether it is a light bulb that needs to be changed or a staff issue that needs to be addressed, the compliance module provides the organized and flexible framework that is necessary.

Did I mention it’s free? Contact us today to learn more!

The post How To Create Action with Retail Compliance Auditor appeared first on Retail Audit Pro.

After further discussion, it became clear that there was quite a bit of overlap between the types of clients we work with, which naturally led to a partnership. Many of the groups that we work with are either franchisors, franchisees, or in the process of becoming one. We are always looking for resources to provide to these folks and now we can refer them to Franchise Growth Solutions for an array of consulting and sales services.

Please reach out to us if you are interested in learning more!

The post New Partner Announcement: Franchise Growth Solutions appeared first on Retail Audit Pro.

Price

What is the price per shop? Your company should be able to explain to you how the pricing for each shop scenario is derived, including how much is allocated to Store Support Specialist payment and the fee for managing the program and logistics. 

Is there a setup fee? Some companies charge a setup fee while others do not. Finding out if any extra money is necessary to get your program started is a critical piece of information to find out before signing on with a company.

You may also want to consider the flexibility of your schedule, as things may come up, and you may need to cancel a Retail Compliance Auditor job for any number of reasons. Different companies have different policies around this, so you will want to take this into consideration.

Quality

What do the completed shop reports look like? Do they have any sort of dashboard? You should ask for a sample or a demo of the reporting options to ensure that it is easy to read and understand all the information you’re looking for.

What is the quality assurance process? How quick is the report turnaround time? It is extremely important to receive the shop reports as soon as possible so that you can deal with anything the team comes across in a timely manner. Another essential component is to have confidence in the legitimacy and consistency of the information.

Support

The main point of contact be during the partnership is one of the most critical points to keep in mind as your begin this new relationship. You should ask companies directly how communication will work and what to do if they need to make any changes to the program. How quickly will they be able to respond to any questions or needs that you may have?

You must also ensure that the company you choose has experience gauging customer experience within your industry. How many shops have they conducted? You should ask for references and testimonials to ensure that they have been around the block and know how to deliver the information that you are seeking from your program.

One Myth: Shoppers

The top question we receive in the sales process is, “who are your shoppers?” It is a good question – people want to know who will be going in to complete the shops. The truth is that most national Retail Compliance Auditor work with many companies, so it is primarily a similar pool of people that we are all using. The better question is what mechanisms they have in place to attract the best possible shoppers, as well as the report template strategy. A properly structured report will deliver the same results — no matter who the shopper is — if the questions are presented well to take out subjectivity.

If you’re looking for a Retail Compliance Auditor program that checks off all the necessary boxes, Retail Audit Pro might have the right solutions for you. Our team handles in-person, online, and phone shops for industries such as fast food, grocery stores, theme parks, and more. Get in touch with us today to find out more about our process!

The post 3 Things to Consider When Choosing a Retail Compliance Auditor Company appeared first on Retail Audit Pro.

Targeted Emails

Our software provider has a robust email system built into their platform that our scheduling team uses throughout the month to send emails looking for people to fill shops in the areas where we need help. We send hundreds of thousands of emails each month, but we need to be careful to follow the anti-spam rules and limitations, as well.

Targeted Calls

We can also make calls to our shoppers right through our software platform. From these calls, we build lists sorted with the most experienced and qualified shoppers at the top. This strategy works for finding extra bodies to perform retail shops or entertainment audits but is also very time-intensive, as our team makes thousands of calls per week. 

Text Messaging

We recognize that not everyone checks their email and that they may be prone to ignore a phone call if it is coming from an unfamiliar number. In some instances where calls and emails don’t do the trick, we can also send text messages out to people.

Bonus Money

Sometimes as much as we may try to recruit a shopper, they may turn the job down because they feel it doesn’t pay enough or the compensation isn’t worth the time and effort that goes into conducting a thorough shop. So, if all else fails, we have a small surplus built into our fee structure for offering people more money in urgent situations at the end of the month.

Routes

When we have multiple available shops in close proximity, we will often try to bundle them together for shoppers. With the ease of access between multiple shopping points, they can have the opportunity to make a few extra dollars, and we can get more shops done. Of course, this depends on how much time the shopper has, as our model is designed to be flexible to accommodate their lives.

New Shopper Recruitment

We use referral programs, Google ads, Facebook ads, and many other means to find new people in certain areas. This strategy tends to be more of a long-term approach to building up the shopper pool. 

Weekly and Monthly Meetings

We review our execution internally every week and at the end of every month to help focus our scheduling team on the right accounts. We will also brainstorm ways to change or improve programs with our clients to help increase execution.

As always, if you have questions about your program’s execution rate or the shopper pool that we have access to in your local area(s), please don’t hesitate to reach out. We strive to be as open and transparent as possible so that you can have a successful Retail Compliance Auditor program built around collecting the feedback you are looking for. 

If you are looking to implement Retail Compliance Auditor into your marketing research to improve your customer experience, reach out to Retail Audit Pro today.

The post Mystery Shop Fulfillment Strategies We Use appeared first on Retail Audit Pro.

I want to start by saying that it is in our best interest to execute at 100% — the way we set up our agreements, you only pay a single price per shop (no setup fees), and we only bill you each month for the shops that are completed. We operate in the manner so that we are aligned and on the same team about building and maintaining a successful Store Support Specialist program. That being said, here are some important things to consider:

Shops in Different Verticals

Different shop types in different industries may be easier or harder. For example, everyone must eat food every day, so it is much easier for us to find shoppers willing to do restaurant shops on a regular basis. For retail and other verticals, it takes a little bit more coercing to find people. The pay and the requirements need to be “worth it” for the shoppers to be interested in taking the extra time out of their day to go do them.

Geography

This is a huge factor. Yes, we have over a million shoppers in our network, but certainly, they are more concentrated in urban areas. It is easier for us to find shoppers in cities, simply because we have more people within a small enough radius.

Shopper Pay 

Unlike some of our competitors, we spell out in our pricing exactly how much our fee is and exactly how much money goes to pay the shoppers for a given shop. Of course, our goal is to keep the overall price of the program as low as possible but skimping on the shopper pay amount only makes it that much more difficult to find people. At the bare minimum, we recommend setting the pay to cover whatever the required expense is for the shop, but the more you are willing to add on top of that, the easier it is for us to find shoppers and the more selective we can be about who we send in.

Program Restrictions

Many of our clients make requests about when to conduct shops, the demographics of the shoppers, and other specifics. Yes, we can accommodate these requests, but again, these things only make it harder for us to find qualified people interested in going along with the instructions. 

Template Length

Put yourself in the shopper’s shoes here. If you are looking at possible opportunities, all else being equal, are you more interested in going out and doing the shop with 30 questions on the report or the one with 60? Please keep this in mind when you are designing your template. Condensing as many questions as possible and focusing only on what is most important to you will help us execute more shops for you.

Shopper Rotation & Shop Volume 

We typically recommend a shopper rotation of 60 or 90 days, meaning that once a shopper completes a shop at a location, they won’t be able to go back for at least that amount of time. Sometimes clients will request that we set it at 180 days or more — however, keep in mind that if we are doing four shops per month, for example, and have a rotation of 180 days, then we need to find 25 different shoppers in that span. This is not impossible, but if you combine this with the factors above (geography, pay, restrictions, etc.), it can significantly impact the execution rate.

Shop Complexity & Leniency With Completed Reports

We try to remind clients that shoppers are customers too. Suppose we constantly have to decline shop reports because they missed one thing, or we inadvertently set them up for failure by giving them too much to remember. In such instances, shoppers will ultimately see this as a reflection of you, and they may not come back to your establishment at all, let alone as a shopper. 

COVID-19 & Overall Staffing Situations

Just like many businesses have been facing since March 2020, it has generally been a bit tougher across the board to find shoppers to do the same work for the same amount of money as before. Ultimately, we leave it up to our clients to determine the shopper pay amount, but this is a factor worth keeping in mind throughout any shop.

Retail Audit Pro places a high value on efficiency and accuracy through all of our Retail Compliance Auditor. As such, we keep these best practices in mind for any business that is willing to use us to improve its customer experience. If you are interested in our store auditing program and using the marketing research and results from successful shops to enhance your company, contact our team today!

The post Mystery Shop Fulfillment and Execution appeared first on Retail Audit Pro.

Field Audits

We have mobile app technology where your regional, district, and location managers can log in on their phones or tablets to fill out regular monthly inspections or checklists. These forms are typically up to 200 questions in length, broken down into sections, and have the ability for photo uploads. The results are housed in the online dashboard, with a variety of data visualization and scoring options so you can see how each of your stores is performing. 

This internal customer service evaluation is very important to ensure that brand standards are being met and operations teams are set up for success! Pricing for creating these dashboards is typically set up as a small charge per audit submitted. If you are a mystery shop client, we will waive your setup fee.

Brand Reputation Management

We have integrated an industry-leading dashboard software platform for analyzing and responding to online reviews, as well as social media and listings management. There are many sites online where people can speak out about your brand – Our BRM solution pulls it all into one place. More and more, customers expect you to respond to their reviews, both positive and negative — and there is no doubt that people make informed decisions about where to eat or shop based on local company review averages. 

If you don’t have an online reputation strategy these days, you’re already losing to your competitors. We can help you set up email alerts and summary reports so you can see and interact with your raving fans, as well as handle any complaints expeditiously. Pricing is a flat rate per location per month, with volume discounts based on how many locations you have.

Guest Surveys

This is the most classic and traditional means of collecting feedback from your customers – Just asking them directly! Our service is a digital comment card customers can access via a link or QR code and fill out a short survey about their customer experience, providing their email address at the end to collect a coupon or incentive if desired. 

Once again, the results are housed in our dashboard with a multitude of summary reporting tools and options so you can dive in and identify any potential areas of improvement in real time. Depending on expected volume, pricing can either be set on a per submission level or at a flat monthly rate.

Pulling It All Together

For the last 3-5 years, all the talk has been about building a data-driven scorecard that can be used internally to best reflect the level of service being provided for customers. This scorecard can be used to assess the health of the company, develop training plans and strategies, and align bonus plans and compensation to how managers are delivering on expectations. 

With our combination of services, the Retail Audit Pro dashboard is designed to be exactly that type of tool. We can put together a scorecard for you and even set it up to be emailed out to you and your stakeholders on a scheduled basis. Check out this recent Q & A with one of our top clients, where he talks about the value of pairing up our services to drive growth for their franchise brand.

Contact us to learn more about our services!

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