Many marketing experts have noted that businesses spend a lot of money attracting new customers and not enough keeping the customers they have. In fact, it costs a lot more money to get a new customer into your storefront then it does to get a customer already in the store to come back next time. By improving your customer service, not only will you increase sales, you will spend less money doing it.

There is another angle to consider in this equation. “Word of mouth advertising” is a powerful force impacting your business and bad news travels faster than good. People who have had a bad experience with your business are more likely to spread the word than those who have a good one. At QMC, we believe that “word of mouth” isn’t advertising as much as simply communication between two or more people.

As with any human interactions, we tend to talk about memorable events that have happened. A bad experience at a business can be one of those memorable events and could influence someone who has never been at your store to avoid it as if the event had happened to them. On the flip side, as you well know, customers who have never heard of your store before will appear simply because someone recommended them to you.

Improve Your Customer Service, Increase Your Customer Base
One of the goals of improving customer service then is to decrease the number of “bad” experiences and increase the number of “good” ones. Not only will you keep the customers you have, you’ll increase your customer base by word of mouth. And you won’t lose any customers, current or potential, to bad customer service experiences.

The Mystery Customer Program is a powerful tool for collecting data and finding your strengths and weaknesses. But collecting data is not the end goal. QMC will help you analyze that data and interpret what it means. For example, there may be several or only one reason why a location received low cleanliness marks. Perhaps it is the outside of the store that needs attention and all it will take is a quick sweep of the sidewalk to improve these marks. The Mystery Customer Program reviews are specific enough to outline exactly where your problem areas lay.

Once we have identified specific customer service issues, we offer recommendations for improvement and develop a training program that will help you implement those changes. Not only will you be able to tell your staff and managers what changes need to be made, you will be able to show them why and have the data to back them up. By presenting the facts and involving your staff, your team will be able to effect lasting change.

Continuous Review to Fit Any Budget
The QMC Mystery Customer Program is most effective when used to regularly monitor the impact your customer service, appearance and products have on ensuring that customer will return. The program is scalable to any business size and budget from small “Mom & Pop” type stores to larger multi-location companies and chains.

But no matter what your budget, the QMC Mystery Customer Program will give you measurable results. By implementing changes based on the data review, you will increase sales and in the long run the program will give you back a large Return on Investment (ROI).

Contact us for more information about the Mystery Customer Program, or view the QMC Mystery Shopping Demo.