Mystery Shopping, Customer Surveys or Social Media?

Mystery Shopping, Customer Surveys or Social Media?

December 16, 2011

We are officially closing in on 2012! While we are all waiting for Santa to arrive, you may be assessing your customer relationship management. Are you contemplating whether to conduct mystery shops, customer surveys or just rely on social media for customer feedback?

Each service has it’s function and can be utilized in conjunction to provide the most complete picture of customer satisfaction.

MYSTERY SHOPPING is a service used to provide objective feedback about product quality and service delivery. Mystery shopping is more about the processes and less about the emotional state of the customer. Were you greeted with “hello”, were your needs assessed, were you helped in a prompt manner?

CUSTOMER SURVEYS are utilized to poll your customers and get to the heart of what they are thinking. Surveys are meant to uncover the more intimate feelings of their experience. It’s a way for the customer to talk directly to you by making specific suggestions, airing their pleasure or displeasure.

SOCIAL MEDIA is how customers talk ABOUT you! Social media is forging business transparency, creating both new challenges and opportunities. The days of carefully crafted press releases or flashy ad campaigns to communicate, the game has changed and customers are demanding a direct relationship with the companies with which they do business.

These days business success has less to do with the size of ad budgets, and more to do with the attention it pays to it’s customers.