Business owners realize without a doubt that service is what brings their clients back for more. Whether you own a restaurant, bar, casino, bookstore or coffeehouse, you want your customers to leave happy, and you want them to come again. Suppose you have a family restaurant with a handful of employees. You have hand picked these employees to represent you and your business and you want to insure that they are treating your customers with the respect and friendliness that they deserve. Perhaps you notice that there is a drop in sales over a particular period of time. As a business owner or manager, it is your job to get to the heart of the matter and find the discrepancy.
One option that business owners have is to hire a shadow shopper . This simple step can pay big dividends. There are a good many benefits to hiring a shadow shopper to regularly visit your establishment. Knowing what kind of service your customers are receiving is the key to identifying the strengths and weaknesses in the one on one interactions between staff and patrons.
A good business owner understands that customers hold strong opinions of what kind of service they have received, whether they know it or not. This is arguably the single most important factor that they will walk away with once they leave your establishment. For example, say a customer walks into the restaurant and the food takes a long time to prepare, the coffee is too strong and the order turns out to be wrong. This could be a very bad experience for the customer and they may choose not to return to the establishment. A good shopper can pinpoint this lack of service for the business owner so that it can be improved upon, and new training or methods can be put into place at the appropriate level of business so that there will be fewer delays and mistakes.
Now, let us take the same scenario, with slow food preparation and a mistake in the order, and throw in a waitress with a great personality, a funny sense of humor, patience, and wit who is reported by the shadow shopper as providing excellent service despite the mistakes. Do you think that customer will return, even though the cook got her order wrong? Yes. It is said that if a customer receives great service they will usually tell one person. However, if a customer receives bad service, they will tell ten people. As a business owner, you can not afford the negative feedback associated with unhappy customers.
Great service is the key to business in most organizations. A shadow shopper can point out the good as well as the not so good. The perky, happy humorous waitress might receive some well deserved praise, perhaps even a bonus as a result of the shopper and their glowing report. This kind of positive feedback tends to rub off on the other employees, who want to be noticed as well for doing a good job. The shopper can be anyone, and they can come in at any time, so it compels your employees to always do their best. This is how you want your business to be represented, is it not? You want professional people who are happy and ready to assist your customers, and who genuinely care about meeting their needs. A shadow shopper can be an invaluable tool to help you keep your customers coming back again and again.
