What makes a customer make a repeat buying decision? It is the satisfaction generated from what he experienced during a buying journey in a brick-and-mortar business point or an online shop. The easier assortment of products, staff behaviour, check-in and checkout facilities, discounts, pricing, and many other factors decide customer satisfaction.
The biggest hurdle in understanding the satisfaction level is the variable experience the customers have. Everyone’s perception varies based on his or her mood, need, etc. Despite this hurdle, it is easier to measure customer satisfaction by mapping a customer’s journey in a store. Let us find out what customer satisfaction is and why businesses consider it crucial.
What is customer satisfaction?
It is the measurement of happiness that a customer enjoys throughout his buying journey in a brick-and-mortar shop or an online service portal. It is determined by the features of a business’ services offered to customers at all levels. A customer will encounter those defined services and prepare a perception of the brand in his mind. It will generate a satisfaction level from the experience gathered from check-in to checkout.
Customer satisfaction is the prime driving factor of the brand image of a business in a competitive market. It needs to be analyzed to understand the experience well and identify the pain points. Based on the research done on customer experience, a new customer experience management (CEM) strategy is designed. This is done by hiring a mystery shopping company. It provides a mystery shopping program designed according to the requirements of a client.
What is mystery shopping?
It is a program where experienced professionals are hired to go to a business point and pretend like customers to walk through the entire journey. They assist in mapping the customer experience in a shop and recognise the pain points.
All these mystery shoppers are provided with a questionnaire. It contains questions that touch on the pre-decided factors related to customer experience. This questionnaire is linked to mystery shopping software used by the service provider. Based on the answers, an audit is done to map and evaluate a customer’s journey in the shop.
How to increase customer satisfaction?
Mystery shopping enables the hirer to identify the hidden complications a customer faces during a buying journey in a shop. The level of satisfaction reduces when there is an inconvenience a customer is facing.
By identifying these inconveniences, a business can redesign its CEM strategy and implement it across all the business points. The prime aim of a mystery shopping program is to discover these pain points and replace them with perfect solutions.
It is only possible when someone experienced is following every step of a customer and evaluating the entire map of a customer’s buying journey. This is how a company providing products and services can elevate the level of customer satisfaction. It hires an experienced mystery shopping service provider to chalk out the plan and to get a 3rd-eye view of the business services it offers to customers to evaluate the satisfaction level.
