Improving retail experience with Epinote mystery shoppers.

The challenge

Lantre wanted to evaluate the quality of customer service at their physical stores, while maintaining anonymity and confidentiality.

The objective of the project was to collect data on customer experience, employees’ product knowledge, financing options recommendations, and upselling skills. It required several visits per store and playing out various purchasing scenarios by the mystery shoppers.

Such projects are typically outsourced to consulting firms that offer bundled services for the retail sector. However, Lantre needed a flexible partner ready to set up the project within days and quickly iterate on the assignments. They decided to work with Epinote and leverage our on-demand workforce.

The solution

We held a meeting with Lantre to learn more about the project’s specifications and requirements. In a single call, all details were discussed and deadlines set, which allowed for a prompt project kick-off.

Lantre provided a list of instructions, including detailed questions they wanted the mystery shoppers to ask and the explicit data points to collect.

Then, Epinote’s associates were trained to act out particular scenarios and play different buying personas, with various requirements and specific questions to ask.

Client scripts were designed to capture a wide range of data on:

Customer Experience

• customer approach time
• conversation opener
• overall service delivery time

Product Knowledge

• sales advisor’s capacity to describe products and features
• customer objection handling

Financial Advice

• presenting purchase options including installments
• matching products with specific features to customer budget expectations

Sales Skills

• attempts to up-sell or cross-sell products
• pitching alternatives to products that were not available

After setting up the process Epinote analysts were scheduled for visits in 3 retail locations, covering different parts of the day, to measure whether customer experience varied between morning, mid-day and evening hours.

The outcome

In-store visits were completed within one month from launching the project. Every interaction was documented with a detailed report including 33 data points. On top of that, each associate provided their personal opinion about the visit, to complement the data input with a context-based assessment. Thanks to the fast turnaround our client was able to test out various approaches to improving their retail experience and get actionable data within weeks.