Case Study

Financial

Motto: "If something doesn’t grow or change, it’s probably dead."
- Judith Rappold IASE President 2006

Our Client had been cooperating with different Mystery Shopping providers for two years before they turned to Phantom Shopping. Despite of the surveys they had been struggling with two major problems:

• Analysis of survey data was difficult and time consuming.
• There was no precise and proven model for the utilization of the results.

Therefore the company could not achieve improvement in the level of customer service, but spent too much time with handling, analysing and trying to make sense of Excel databases and PPT studies. Mystery Shopping was less of an investment for future than a growing chain of presentations, which would never be utilized in reality.

How did Phantom Shopping help?

After surveying the needs and demands of our client we came to the conclusion that the time of lengthy, complicated studies with scarce new information was over. It is time to focus on the practice!

• That’s why we developed the reporting system that currently counts as the most advanced one in Europe. It provides quickly and transparently the most important results for the management as well as the relevant information for the tested persons.
• That’s why we developed a complex Mystery Shopping program, specifically suiting our Client’s needs and traits, the efficiency of which has been proven since.

What is a Mystery Shopping Program - by the interpretation of Phantom Shopping?

In brief: A plan of action to survey customer experience and the level of service in individual business units for the sake of improvement.

What makes a Mystery Shopping Program successful?

• Gives an accurate picture of employees: „This is how the customers see you!”
• The correct and quickly reviewable feedback enables us to recognise the problematic areas of customer service, and lets us follow the trends – may that be on shop units or per single questions of the questionnaire.
• At first, Pilot Survey serves as basis to identify problematic areas and determine the level of service prior to the Mystery Shopping Program. These values serve as benchmarks to regular surveys that will follow.
• A lot depends on the Client, too. After each survey there should be enough time secured for an „internal reaction” of communicating the results of the results within the company and setting up a system of consequences.
• A successful Mystery Shopping Program helps define areas in need of improvement and training, thus enabling the most efficient allocation of resources.
• Mystery Shopping Surveys can also be used to evaluate the efficiency of trainings and return of investment, thus providing valuable feedback.
• ’Any customer could be a Mystery Shopper’! – once the employees become aware of this,
• once providing high level of service becomes their everyday routine,
• once regular surveys provide the essential feedback and controlling effect, long-term improvement can be achieved. Those previously common – negative – fluctuations in the level of service can be prevented.
• This way the amount spent on surveys and training will not be just another sum in the budget, but will be useful and returned investment that brings profit.

The Mystery Shopping program resulted in improving level of customer service regarding every tested segment of the financial institute.

1. For the Branch Network, the greatest achievement was that the offices and employees, that originally showed inconsistent results, were able to produce a more even level of the provided services. Those with lower results managed to catch up with the ones that had high scores. Even the best ones found room for improvement.

2. The Network of Sales Representatives had the most surprising deficiencies. In the same time with the Mystery Shopping program, the network was reconstructed. Feedback and controlling-effect provided by regular mystery Shopping Surveys was an indispensable basis for this reconstruction.

3. The initial survey conducted to identify problematic areas discovered such deficiencies in the Call Center customer service that had previously been addressed by costly trainings. This clearly indicated that resources allocated for innovation were not spent efficiently, neither were the customers treated as it could have been expected.

Mystery call surveys – testing the services of both the Client and its competitors – have been an important part of Mystery Shopping programs ever since. Effectiveness of the program is proven by the fact that the Call Center of our Client has become one of the best in its league from being a file-closer.

During the first two years of our cooperation, our Client underwent a dynamic expansion: they adopted a new financial activity into their services, and expanded their branch network.

This growth was effectively supported by the Mystery Shopping Program, which enabled several key factors to be measured and continually improved, thus helping an extensive expansion to be joined by customer satisfaction enhancement.

The most important task for the next period is to achieve improvement and maintain the increasing trends despite the symptoms of recession. Recent events have called attention to the fact that only those companies will be able to retain and, most of all, develop their competitiveness which pay due attention to enhance customer performance.

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