What does the future of CX look like? As we enter a new decade, customer experience is firmly positioned as a competitive advantage and something most companies are prioritizing.
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Tag Archive for: Customer Satisfaction
With only 29 shopping days left until Christmas Day, consumers are buying at brick-and-mortar stores, but still do most of their product research online. Moving into 2020, retailers have the opportunity to go a step further and leverage data-driven and digital technologies to elevate the customer experience in more meaningful ways. Read more
For years now, traditional retail stores have been under attack. Consumers love the convenience and selection of shopping online, leaving brick-and-mortar stores to be dubbed a dying breed. But smart brick-and-mortar stores are undergoing a major transformation to keep up with the times. Read more
Bad customer service is costing businesses BILLIONS. $537 billion to be precise, according to Vision Critical. With today’s technology when a bad interaction is shared in an instant, businesses cannot afford a negative customer experience.
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Ever wondered what you can do to improve your customers’ experience with your brand? Now is the time to create a customer experience (CX) strategy.
‘Team members must be “people persons.” In the hospitality industry, we are always interacting, whether it’s with co-workers, guests, or vendors. If we cannot do our job with a spirit of hospitality, executing genuine guest service, we will fail our team and our guests.‘ BARE shares an article by Larry Stuart for Forbes on “Hiring The Spirit Of Hospitality.”
Call Centers are a tricky topic when it comes to customer services. We have all had the opportunity to experience their effectiveness or inefficacy, and some of us have even encountered the opposite side and had a job as a call center representative. [spacer height=”20px”]
Those who worked in this field know how hard this job can be. The customers are fighting their way to through the IVR (Interactive Voice Response -the actual menu- its purpose is to direct the customer to the right person) so they can find a real person who is competent and is able to solve their problems, ask their questions. As customers we can be inpatient, angry, frustrated, so the representative must not only perform professionalism, efficacy and promptness, but enthusiasm, politeness, positivity, and most importantly honesty.[spacer height=”40px”]
That’s where mystery shopping comes in! Some call centers have their own monitoring system with mentors and colleagues who are experts in this field so they can help improve the service. But for those companies who would like to build up a more neutral and comprehensive picture about the quality of their call center services, the obvious choice is a mystery shopping service. They know it can be more effective and genuine when mystery shoppers do this, because mystery shoppers are always closer to the target audience of the company, and the way of their work is much more spontaneous and lifelike than an internal monitoring system.[spacer height=”20px”]
The so-called Front Office is the most important part for any service-provider company, because it’s where the company meets the customers: through the employees, and also the customers see the business through the customer service center representatives. That’s why it is vital to pay close attention to the customer service.
[spacer height=”20px”] Simply put, there are 5 main pillars of an efficient call center, so either as a customer, or a representative of a call center, here is what you should pay attention to:
- IVR : is it clear, fast, and concise? How long have you been waiting?
- Call Center Representative : is he or she polite, kind, a professional, helpful? Was he or she able to solve your problem? If not, what did he or she do?
- How many times have you been put on hold? And how long?
- How long was the call in total? Was the length appropriate according to the problem?
- What opportunities do you have for giving a about the phone call service? How it seems, does the company take it seriously?
Author: Adrienne
Adrienne is a guest blogger of BARE International. She is interested in many things: from playing music, riding horses, to reading ancient texts in their originally written languages. Basically she never gets bored.
Interested in becoming an Evaluator with BARE International?
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Want to be a guest blogger for BARE’s Mystery Evaluator’s Community?
Apply to: akocsis@bareinternational.com
It all started in September. I arrived to this beautiful country when the weather was still nice. The air was rich with autumn scents – by the way it was the exact same feeling as it supposed to be according to my Hungarian standards. This means nice and warm sunshine during the day, colour changing leaves, crispy air in the mornings, and so on. It was beautiful, and just the way I like it. For the whole week.
On top of that, everybody was kind and nice, in the shops as well! What to say, I was impressed, how everybody spoke English, how everybody was able to be nice, friendly and professional at the same time. What to say, this treatment fulfilled my checklist for an outstanding customer service, absolutely:
- Smile from afar – I know: you, me, we are all only humans with our fluctuating moods and sometimes it is really hard to do our job with a smile on our faces. But it’s worth the effort. I have not one, but several shop assistants working in nearby stores who I started to like during the years. We shared smiles, then longer greetings, and after that our thoughts and dreams and we even started to share stories from our life.
- Clean shop – oh, yes, there isn’t a worst thing when you enter the shop and it looks like a battlefield.
- Help me, I’m lost! – Without the shop assistant’s help I would never have found my non-allergic bread.
- Don’t make me think – well, this is just like the previous one. When I’m shopping, I’m more or less on autopilot, so it can be really problematic, if I start circling in the shop and not finding the desired products. In this case either I gave up or sought for help. Once I even asked a stranger – who, according to me, looked like an employee of the supermarket – where I could find my favourite chocolate. The poor victim looked so dumbfounded, I felt really terrible after it, because I judged him by his clothes. Lesson learned.
- Respect me – even if I’m a foreigner or worst, a tourist.
- Try to understand my needs – listen carefully, with the intent to understand the others is one of the greatest gifts ever.
- No hurry, let me breathe and take my time – give me space to feel comfortable while I’m deciding what I want to buy. I really liked that. But when I needed them, the staff was always nearby.
- Give me some extra tips – I’d love to hear about the latest discounts and the best offers – who wouldn’t?
Conclusion: if you want to lose customers, don’t follow the Dutch example.
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Author: Anita @AnitaKocsis910
Anita is an employee of Bare International. Besides her work, she loves doing yoga, dancing, running, travelling and reading – which is why she often wonders how would it be possible to fit one or two more hobbies into her schedule. Her love for the automotive industry came from the passion for innovations and technology. She has a master’s degree in International Economics and Business.
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Interested in becoming an Automotive Evaluator with BARE International?
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Want to be a guest blogger for BARE’s Automotive community We Are Cars?
Apply to: akocsis@bareinternational.com
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Now of course, we at BARE International -and everyone else who doesn’t work here – do not condone lying as a reliable (no pun intended) or virtuous way of living; indeed, you can get into very serious trouble, should you knowingly tell untruths (you can go to jail for lying in a court of law, for example). So lying is not okay… typically, but we’re all so good at it! Moreover, we begin doing it very early on, some researchers say as early as 6 months old.
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The title itself might be somewhat misleading, if not an outright porky pie. But much in the same way this piece will illustrate, it is in no way harmful, and can be in fact beneficial to both parties (the writer and the reader). The kind of slight-of-hand I’m talking about is utilized by Mystery Shopping, an intriguing, interesting and ultimately fib-fueled world, in which lying helps everybody concerned.
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As children we are all taught – and rightly so – that lying is unequivocally a ‘Bad Thing’, discouraged at all levels by any parent/teacher worth their salt. But here’s the kicker: sometimes it can actually be used for good, and I’m not talking about the little white lies that occur from day to day (”that was delicious!”), nor the big-time (”the moon landing was faked”) kind of lie, but rather a type of lying that can help improve the situations for all involved.
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Don’t believe me? Then I’d say fair enough, considering the above paragraph’s content (and that it’s healthy to have a good dose of cynicism when it comes to reading things on the internet).
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But please, allow me to convince you…
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1 – NO ONE GETS HURT
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To the uninitiated, Mystery Shopping might seem like some clandestine, covert black market; a situation where unsuspecting staff are duped by officious, clip board-wielding telltales clad in beige trenchcoats while wearing sunglasses. That’s only partly true (they don’t really wield a clipboard, though the “I Spy” attire is optional); certainly, the employees of our clients are never mislead or tricked into something untoward, and aren’t in any danger of immediate negative repercussions. The closest it can come to, for example, is a project in which our Evaluators (a fancy word for Mystery Shopper) will appear overtly suspicious during a shop, asking odd questions and generally trying to set off alarm bells in the employee they’re auditing; such signaling might be picked up and acted upon, though even if it is missed, that’s important and useful data too.
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But the key thing to remember is that it’s a completely safe situation – there’s never been an instance of someone losing their job due to a Mystery Shop, and there never will be. Our Evaluators pose as regular shoppers to aid the actual regular shoppers, and help sharpen the staff of whichever business they have chosen to evaluate.
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2 – ALL-INCLUSIVE IMPROVEMENT
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Of course, humans aren’t the only animals that lie: a few years ago Koko the Gorilla (celebrated for her 1,000+ sign language vocabulary) asked for a kitten to have as a pet, such is her affinity toward felines. Like many, Koko likes to take the credit for her good behavior and blames the bad on someone else. After ripping out a sink from the wall of her habitat, her humans asked what happened.
Koko signed, “The cat did it.”
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Setting aside any ethical concerns, the truth is that when you do a spot of Mystery Shopping, therefore inherently not telling the whole truth, it is good for everybody: good for us (the company on whose behalf you’re Mystery Shopping ); good for the market (as it keeps the ecosystem strong); good for the store (provides useful analytics with which they can improve themselves and their staff); good for the customer (better quality staff & store means better quality shopping & service); and of course, good for you (you stand to make that bit extra at the end of an otherwise predictable month)!
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Customer Experience Research is the name of the game – there’s a formula we use that is as follows: ECX = OE + EC + CS, which stands for Excellent Customer Experience = Operational Excellence + Employee Commitment + Customer Satisfaction. Instead of seeing lies in a single category of selfish and wrongheaded behavior, it’s possible to think critically of lying and to consider instances where it can be productive and healthy. As a first step, you can allow yourself to not feel guilty about what you’re talking about during your Mystery Shop: in fact, a great many of our Evaluators thoroughly enjoy the role-playing aspect of the visits, performing the scenarios confidently and coming up with added details to embellish their backstories. We all like to pretend to be someone else, especially if we’re permitted – and paid!
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Speaking of which…
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3 – YOU GET PAID FOR SERVICES RENDERED
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Either in the form of a shop fee or as a reimbursement, you’ll be able to rack up considerable extra cash come the end of the month. That means you’re able to boost your income by doing a test drive for one of our automotive projects, while also picking up a pair of new shoes effectively gratis (as amount you paid can be remunerated). Fancy a stay in a hotel, on the house? Be my guest. There’s nothing quite like waltzing through the door and giving a false name at the reception; and who doesn’t like knowing they’ve got away with even the simplest bluff (most people are better at it that they’d probably like to think: in a 10 minute conversation with a stranger, we humans will tell an average of 3 lies, though the majority rarely even realize they’re doing it). In addition to the well-known bassline of Mystery Visits, there are several ways in which to make it work best suited your own routine; if you don’t feel like leaving the house there’s Mystery Calling & E-Mailing, used for checking customer service, response time and ease of use.
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Okay, so the previous sentence might sound like it came off the back of one of our recruitment flyers (it didn’t), but the point I’m making is that you needn’t be Lance Armstrong to be one of our Mystery Evaluators. It’s a simple job, and can easily be done well. What’s more, you’ll never have to pay for the privilege of Mystery Shopping, and never should.
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BONUS 4th REASON! – THE MORE THE MERRIER
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In short: we’ll pay you a bonus for every friend you recommend, and the cherry on top is that it won’t negatively affect you in any way at all – many of our projects have a mandatory “cool down” period between shops, so even if you wanted to perform visits week-in-week-out, there’s no guarantee you’d be able to. Introducing someone you know to us is the easiest way in which to keep a healthy cycle time ticking over, meaning that even when you’re unable to do a shop, your friend will be.
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So, to conclude: there are times when not telling the truth is a good thing. Lying to help another person or their business is and should be perceived as good, while lying which has no effect – or actually harms others – is of course wrong. The thing to remember is that, done properly, Mystery Shopping reveals a bevy of benefits, by enticing businesses to up their game (perhaps if a rival seems to be pulling ahead), or even to practice new policies (if their previous form isn’t up to scratch), and that is a benefit to us all as customers. If the boss is evaluating an employee, they’re bound to be on their best behavior: a Mystery Shopper ensures a realistic evaluation based on how employees interact with real customers and not just their supervisors.
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Apologies for such a clickbait-y title, though I suppose you could even consider it as something of a white lie: yes, I’ve slightly exploited your curiosity, but now both of us have benefited – with you learning a little bit about something you (presumably) didn’t really know much about before, and me getting to spread the word. You can’t say we don’t practice what we preach. I mean, would I lie to you?
Author: Richard
Richard is a real community builder, involved in various activities within the office, helps charities and has a degree in filmmaking and screenwriting. He’s a ”Creative”, interested in telling stories, making connections and helping generate ideas. An avid reader, he is passionate about gaming, food (don’t feed him after midnight) and history. He has plans for the future, and you -the one reading this sentence- are part of them.
Interested in becoming an Evaluator with BARE International?
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Want to be a guest blogger for BARE’s Mystery Evaluator’s Community?
Apply to: akocsis@bareinternational.com