Up until recently, I never really considered the possibilities and benefits of performing Telesurveys or more specifically, Mystery Shopping calls to businesses around Australia as a service we should offer. I had thought that those types of calls would be probably deemed too expensive, as I could not envisage an immediate return on the investment for the client whom we were performing the Mystery Shopping for.

Therefore, it was not really a service Imperatif opted to promote. That was until we were contacted by a very large group made up of many smaller businesses around Australia and asked to perform Mystery Shopping calls on thousands of similar businesses in competition with our client. The idea was pretty simple in that our call centre staff would make contact with the business, pretend to be a potential customer, and then ask and record pertinent information such as:

·       Immediate availability of the service

·       Price options and discounts

·       What’s included in the fees

·       Opening and Closing Times

From there, Imperatif would be required to not only provide all of that feedback to our client on an individual business by business basis but also provide detailed statistical reports such as the average price by service, state and suburb. A pretty daunting task, thousands of calls, a complete reporting suite, 95% call completion rate, staff training… and all within a tight timeframe.

Taking a logical approach, we quickly collected and analysed the existing data, cleansed and loaded the data into our CRM system, formulated easy to use question and answer workflows and built state of the art reporting dashboards that would automate on a daily basis to our clients. The next step, and most crucial, came in the training of our operators to be 100% convincing in their telephone calls to competitor businesses.

It was vital that whoever received the call felt comfortable that the caller was a genuine potential customer and as such would provide him / her with the information our client needed. Within the nominated timeframe, all calls were completed and our had all the information they needed… and boy, did they use it!

Using the information Imperatif gained rom the mystery shopping calls, very carefully our client made the below immediate changes to their service offering in certain states and suburbs where their competitors were outperforming them:

·       Reduction in price in QLD, VIC and SA regional areas by 5%

·       Increase in operating hours across the board

·       Provision on some additional extra benefits

·       Increase in price in VIC, SA, NT and WA metro areas by 3%

Did it work? Well of course it did, I received an email today from the client advising that in the last 2 months they have experienced a substantial increase in sales and profitability just from making the above initial changes. Further, they intend to utilise more of the data provided in order to further hone their service offerings in which they are very confident will only benefit their business as well as the overall customer experience.

Well, it just goes to show: if a company is willing to spend the time, money and effort performing a professional and well executed mystery shopping / Telesurveying program as well as understand and act upon the results… the world is their oyster. Paul

For any other queries you may have regarding Telesurveying or Mystery Shopping, call Imperatif on 1300 868 567 today.