Are Retail Compliance Auditor Assignments for Competitors Common?

Our clients ask us from time to time if we offer competitor Retail Compliance Auditor, and the short answer is yes! We are absolutely willing to shop competitors, as long as it is accompanied by a regular inward-facing mystery shop program as well. Pricing for competitor shops is typically the same or very close to your existing prices, and you can order them on an as-needed basis. 

We are more than happy (to the extent that you can provide us the details on those competitors) to give you comparison data, but we are not willing to solely act as a “spying” service. Our intended purpose for any secret shopping we undergo for your competitors is to use the data that we come away with and compare it to the results of your own Retail Compliance Auditor experience. This way, you can see how you stack up and focus on the areas you need to improve upon.

Finding Room for Improvement

Competitor shops are extremely valuable in providing context to your own mystery shop data. You may think that you are excelling or struggling in certain parts of your customer experience, but if you don’t have something else to compare it to, your analysis may fall short. 

Here are some examples of items that our clients will have us look for in competitor shops:

• Pricing
• Product features and benefits
• Product availability
• Staff sales skills
• Staff response time
• Subjective feedback from the customer about the experience

This information, coupled with the results of a mystery shop at your own business, gives you in-depth information regarding what is working for you and your competitors and what isn’t. From there, you can make any necessary changes that can bolster your customer service and allow your employees to have a better shopping experience.

Enhance Your Marketing Research

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that you are better (or worse) than your competition. Go gather some data using our shoppers so you can genuinely assess where you stand and find ways to improve. Once your customer service evaluation is complete, you can see what they are doing well and where you can improve, helping solidify your business and building your reputation.

Curious about how a Retail Compliance Auditor company can help your competitor analysis? Retail Audit Pro can help you learn more about your company’s customer interactions and help you discover what to build upon to improve your business. Ask us about incorporating competitor shops into your program today!

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• Grow per-unit sales
• Ensure that all locations are representing the brand in a consistent, uniform fashion
• Ensure that the customer has a great experience no matter when they visit
• Find ways to improve the customer experience 
• Reward franchisees, managers, and staff members for doing a great job

There are many different methods that can be used to evaluate how franchisees are performing and upholding brand standards, but we believe that Retail Compliance Auditor is the most effective and inexpensive way to put boots on the ground and see what your customers are seeing firsthand. 

Grow Per-Unit Sales

Providing outstanding products and customer service will result in your customers returning and recommending your brand to others. This is a fundamental aspect of growing a business — just don’t make the mistake of assuming everything is going well. Include questions on your mystery shop report that get right to the heart of the matter and assess whether the level of service being provided by all of your locations is up to par. What gets measured gets done!

Ensure All Locations Are Representing the Brand in a Consistent, Uniform Fashion

Do you expect every customer to be greeted within a certain time, with a certain phrase? Do you expect staff members to ask your customers specific questions or educate them in a particular way? These items can and should be included in your mystery shop report so you can track how well your expectations are being met.

Ensure the Customer Has a Great Experience No Matter When They Visit

If you were to randomly pop into one of your franchise locations during a busy time and during a slow time, do you think you would receive the same experience? This is another aspect of a Retail Compliance Auditor program that can be valuable from a franchise compliance perspective. We can send people in during weekdays, weekends, early, and late to see if there are any differences that need to be addressed.

Find Ways to Improve the Customer Experience 

You can always ask your customers, “How can we be better?” but you are bound to get a wide array of responses based on their subjective opinion of how things should be. Our nationwide Retail Compliance Auditor will evaluate the experience using a detailed checklist which makes it easy to identify which items, big or small, need some attention to improve the overall experience. By following the trends and patterns over time, you can put together a better training or onboarding process for new franchisees to help get them up to speed quicker.

Reward Franchisees, Managers, and Staff Members for Doing a Great Job

Finally, don’t fall into that trap of looking for your franchisees to do things wrong so you can slap them on the wrist. Instead, leverage the really great mystery shop reports by providing some financial incentives, sharing them publicly, and even including a reward at your annual conference to celebrate the folks doing the hard work on the front lines to build your brand.

Growing a business through franchising can be very difficult, but if you have the right processes and partners in place, the sky’s the limit. Please contact us today about implementing a Retail Compliance Auditor program to fit the needs and goals of your franchise operation. We have decades of experience working with hundreds of franchisors and franchisees in a wide range of industries. Call us now for more information! 

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Here at , we often find ourselves reminding clients and prospective clients that Retail Compliance Auditor are also their typical, everyday customers.

Are there a few bad apples? Definitely.
Do we ever catch fraudulent activity and deal with unprofessional behavior? Absolutely.

However, if you’ve worked with as many shoppers as we have (over 200,000 in the last 5 years alone), you know that most of them are ordinary, hardworking people who are trying to make a few extra bucks – and perhaps feel like a secret agent for a few hours. We encourage shoppers to evaluate with a critical eye so that clients get honest feedback about their experience.

Occasionally, a shop report is returned to us because a manager doesn’t agree with the opinion provided. Perhaps the language was too sharp, the scoring too harsh or the shopper too picky. We are asked to alter feedback, scoring or sometimes throw out a report. We are certainly willing to reconduct shops when requested because we want clients to be 100% satisfied with the program. However, when you decline a report because you didn’t like the feedback – you are not only losing out on a customer’s opinion – you’ve possibly lost a customer for life.

It is important to remember that shoppers are not out to ‘get’ anyone. They are compensated to give their time and feedback, and it’s not always easy to hear. Our recommendation: trust your shoppers. Welcome the negative (the harsh, the dramatic, the sensitive) along with the positive, glowing reviews. Otherwise, the data may be skewed, and the program’s integrity is lost in the process.

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In a rapidly changing world where entire industries are being gobbled up by Amazon, owners and operators are being forced to put themselves in their customers’ shoes to ensure that their value proposition is strong enough to compete, let alone grow! From Forbes:

“If you aren’t in the business of saving your customers their precious time, making their lives easier and better, you risk being disrupted by a newbie who will.”

What is it about your product or service that makes you different? Assuming you have a compelling answer to this question, then begs the next: What tools do you have in place to ensure that each and every customer has this same experience consistently? After all, what gets measured, gets done. “The companies that have better customer experiences all have CEOs that care about customer experience and sew it into the fabric of the company.” These leaders understand that it is not a choice – If they were to assume that everything was happening ‘as planned’ company-wide would be simply irresponsible.

We believe strongly that customer experience data should be an integral part of every organization’s KPI scorecard. Not merely looking at overall survey score averages or Yelp scores once in a while (or when things aren’t going so well), but by focusing on each customer touchpoint and breaking them down into pieces, it becomes much easier to see what’s really going on behind the scenes. Leveraging this data on an ongoing basis to make key customer experience decisions – That is where you will find the ROI.

We have developed a tool set to properly and consistently evaluate these touchpoints. Each provide value on their own, but bundled together begins to give you a 360-view of your customer experience.

• Mystery Shopping – providing unbiased, third party data based on tailored questionnaires specific to the company’s focus.
• Guest surveys – gives direct feedback from customers and employees.
• Brand reputation management – monitors social media sentiment, as well as manages online reviews and ratings.
• Internal field audits – provides data on how well staff is internally executing operational procedures.

If everyone in the organization understands what part they play in the customer experience as well as how they will be ‘graded’ on a consistent basis, then these key indicators begin to take on a life of their own. This approach creates an evolution internally where the numbers aren’t just talked about or posted somewhere, but rather begin to integrate themselves into the culture.

What are your expectations for your customer experience today? How will those expectations change in a year? 5 years? How do they compare to your competitors? The only way to move the needle is to start by measuring against those expectations on an ongoing basis in a very detailed way, in order to uncover areas of opportunity and make the necessary improvements. We’re here to partner with you in this endeavor.

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What’s more scary is that consumers are now in the drivers seat. Your brand reputation is no longer driven by you and what you put out there in the market. It is now governed by consumer sentiment as reflected online. Protecting your brand reputation means not only monitoring your customers’ experiences with your business at all touch-points, but also managing online reviews and sentiment. One negative Tweet, Instagram picture, or Facebook post can spiral into a brand reputation nightmare. Don’t become the next Ted Mosby.

This guide will share 5 ways you can protect your online brand reputation before you become a statistic.

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CONCORD, NH – August 21, 2018 – , a leading provider of Retail Compliance Auditor services, today announced they have added online brand reputation management to their suite of services. This new service is designed to help business owners and operators control their brand’s online ratings, reviews and reputation with an integrated platform that monitors and manages social media, as well as aggregates ratings sites.

“We have heard clients talk about the pain they have in managing social media and online reviews for years now,” stated Tyler Goodwin, CEO of . “We are thrilled to provide an offering that simplifies this and enhances their ability to manage their brand’s reputation online. Now they can know exactly how customers feel about their brand, as well as monitor how prospective customers may perceive them.”

Online brand reputation management is a hot topic for business operators and marketing leaders today. With 91% of online searches not going past page 1, and Google becoming the first place prospective customers go to learn about a business, not monitoring an online reputation is no longer an option for businesses. The impact can be severe if companies don’t react quickly to public comments, and consumers expect transparency in a brand that can only be accomplished online.

The platform, which is provided in an integrated dashboard with their Retail Compliance Auditor service, is feature-rich with capabilities designed to take the complexity out of managing the various social channels.  

The robust feature set includes:

• Online review management
• Heatmaps
• Competitive benchmarking
• Location listing monitoring
• Social media monitoring & management
• Posted photo monitoring
• Rank tracking
• Review booster
• Sentiment analysis
• System integrated workflows

A video overview is available to learn more.

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When thinking about how to structure your Retail Compliance Auditor program for maximum benefit, it is important to consider all of the ways that customers interact with your brand and your staff. We find that one of the most overlooked and underestimated touchpoints is the first stage of any customer journey mapping — the phone call experience. 

From sales reps to independent contractors, nearly every vertical interacts with customers over the phone in some capacity and is often a point of emphasis on any customer feedback surveys. No matter what industry you’re in or what product/service you provide, you likely have a phone number (or multiple) that customers or potential customers can use to reach out to you to get their questions answered. With that in mind, you must have a plan to make your phone experiences pleasant for the person on the other end.

Phone shops are critical to ensure you are monitoring and measuring the complete customer experience, and Retail Compliance Auditor are always more than willing to take on these shops when available to them. We strongly encourage adding phone shops to your program for several other reasons. Here are a few:

Low Cost

The last thing you want to worry about is additional expenses, but if it improves your customer experience, it’s worth it in the end. Luckily, there is no hefty price tag on these Retail Compliance Auditor jobs, which makes adding this to your program a no-brainer. Since there is no travel component to a phone shop, we are able to keep our shopper reimbursement amount in the $5-$10 range, which typically results in a total per shop cost of $40-$60 (depending on the length of the template, length/complexity of call, etc.)

Easy to Set Up and Customize

One other important difference between in-person shops and phone shops is that it is much easier for shoppers to follow a script and keep detailed notes while carrying out a phone call. Because of this, we can establish 4-5 key questions to make sure that the shopper asks so that they can report back on how your team members answered those questions. Whether these scenarios are standard/typical or ‘curveballs’ for your staff, you can quickly and easily determine if these conversations are being carried out as expected or if there may be a training opportunity.

Additionally, we recommend setting up a variety of phone call scenarios and shopping on a consistent basis so that you can monitor the customer experience from all possible angles. Believe it or not, many customers’ purchase decisions may be heavily influenced by whether or not they had a pleasant experience on the phone with you, so being prepared for any situation can ultimately make or break whether or not you get a customer’s service.

Easy to Execute

One question we often hear in the sales process is how quickly we can get a program up and running. With in-person shops, the pool of shoppers for us to draw from is confined to the local area, so it can typically take a few weeks to build awareness and gain traction. The pool becomes much larger for phone shops, allowing us to find willing and qualified participants very quickly from a wide range of national Retail Compliance Auditor.

Audio Recording Option

Another significant advantage for phone shops is the ability to record them so that you can listen to yourself afterward. These recordings are attached right to the related report that comes through, so you can easily locate, compare and share them as you’d like. This feature is optional and can be included for just $5 per shop.

Don’t overlook the importance of measuring every customer touchpoint – Any interaction can be make-or-break for your brand. By mixing in some phone shops to your Retail Compliance Auditor schedule, you can get out in front of issues before they become real problems.

provides opportunities for Retail Compliance Auditor across multiple verticals, from retail stores to entertainment audits and so much more. If you are looking for advanced marketing research methods to improve your customer satisfaction, including through phone conversations and other customer touch points, get in touch with us today!

The post The Customer Touchpoint You Are Likely Not Monitoring appeared first on Retail Audit Pro.

That begs the next question: What are the best strategies for measuring and monitoring all these various customer experiences? There are four main channels to go about seeing the full picture:

• Put yourself in their shoes (Retail Compliance Auditor)
• Ask them directly for feedback (surveys)
• See what they’re saying to everyone else (social media/online reviews)
• Ensure your internal processes are being followed (field audits)

Each of these methods may be used individually to collect useful information for certain desired outcomes. However, combining them into a full ongoing brand management strategy allows for supreme confidence in decision-making and maximum return on investment. The truth is that your customers have different voices depending on who they are talking to and what they are being asked. If you don’t have a plan in place to capture all those voices, then you may be missing critical pieces of information. Here is how each tool is a piece to the overall puzzle.

Mystery Shopping

This is where it all begins for us here at . By using a third-party to send in anonymous customers, the resulting stream of objective and truly authentic data reveals the specific parts of the customer experience that are meeting your expectations – or not. Organizations have been ‘shopping’ themselves for decades, looking to understand and evaluate all of the little details that enable them to be sure they are constantly putting their best foot forward. Mystery Shopping allows organizations to determine if the standards of their brand are being upheld or not.

Surveys

By far the most traditional and well-known form of customer experience management, survey data will give you the most real-time, subjective analysis of an interaction with a customer. While this feedback is extremely valuable because ‘the customer is always right’, there will inevitably be drastic inconsistency and bias from person to person depending on their background and past experiences. Comparing and contrasting the findings between surveys and Retail Compliance Auditor helps to provide more clarity on how the details affect the customer’s overall experience, and vice-versa.

Brand Reputation Management

The dawn (and now evolution of) social media has recently brought another perspective into the fold. Whereas previously it was much more difficult to track the relative positivity or negativity with which customers would spread the word about their experience, now things are very easy. All they have to do is go online and post reviews to a myriad of websites with a range of visibility to others. is excited to provide our clients more control and analytics over this new paradigm. Our platform allows our clients to view, track and respond to these reviews all in one place. As we all know, people have the freedom to say anything they want online, and prospective customers are increasingly using these reviews as the basis to make their purchasing decisions. It is no longer an option for business leaders and brand managers to ignore this reality. However, this is just one piece of the customer experience management puzzle, and when combined with the other strategies mentioned above, they should all feed together to reduce the pressure of each.

Field Audits

Assuming that you have a set of standards and procedures in place for how your well-oiled machine should be running from an internal perspective, then you must have a mechanism (a checklist or series of them) for making sure that everything is good to go before any customer experience takes place. By compiling this information in the same location as your Retail Compliance Auditor, survey and social media data, you can easily diagnose how your internal performance correlates with the end result for your customers. You simply can’t have one without the other – and since you are always evolving and changing to meet the needs of your customers, the process of pursuing perfection really never ends.

A Retail Compliance Auditor program is the foundation to learn how your brand is delivering on its promise to customers. But a comprehensive program combining mystery shop data with brand reputation management, feedback surveys, and field audits is the most effective way to evaluate your customer experience and brand integrity. Check out our additional services for more information.

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So how much does Retail Compliance Auditor cost?

Here at , we are committed to transparency. Whether internal or external, we want to put all our cards on the table and make sure that all stakeholders are on the same page. We believe that dynamic is essential to a mutually beneficial client relationship. This transparency begins with the pricing we offer. We offer an all-inclusive per shop price point. We do not have a set-up fee, a licensing fee, a technology fee or anything else. This per shop price consists of two main factors: our cost of services and the shopper’s compensation for the assignment they are being asked to complete.

Each client is different, and those differences reflect the varying goals of each business we work with. Our pricing reflects those variations. To account for those variations, we have developed a pricing calculator. Think of our cost of services as a scope of work outline. Our pricing calculator ensures that our clients only pay for what they need, and nothing else. Inputs for our pricing calculator include, for example, the length of the questionnaire our Retail Compliance Auditor will be asked to fill out, schedule or demographic restrictions and the time it takes for the Retail Compliance Auditor to complete the assignment. We provide an agreement that outlines the factors that have generated the output of the pricing calculator. We are going to walk you through exactly what you are paying for. Cost of services can range from $25-$100 per shop depending on the scope of work.

The second piece of your per shop price point is the compensation to the Retail Compliance Auditor. This is an agreed upon flat fee that is paid to the Retail Compliance Auditor for successfully completing their assignment. does not see one dime of the shopper’s compensation. The shopper compensation must cover the required expenses the Retail Compliance Auditor will incur during their assignment as well as additional payment for their time in completing a great report. The more we can pay our shoppers the better our clients’ end-product will be. Shopper compensation can range from $10-$200 and varies widely based on the required expenditures of the mystery shop.

We will work with you to build a program that fits your needs and your budget.

For more information, check out our pricing page.

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