Mystery Studies
Customers' expectations in their direct contact with companies' service operations frequently remain unsatisfied, in part at least. The service quality at these customer interfaces assumes crucial significance here, particularly if customers are no longer able to distinguish between the products and services on offer.
The Greatest Possible Objectivity
Nevertheless, it isn't easy to obtain objective information about the quality of one's own services. Especially when it comes to services provided by a third party, companies are often not informed about the actual quality of service received by their own customers. As a company, you would naturally like to know the extent to which your stipulations vis-ŕ-vis external service providers or commercial partners are in reality implemented in terms of customer contact.
In this context, the goal of mystery analyses is to honestly take stock of the actual status quo at customer interfaces. In order to obtain information that is valid and as objective as possible, we have a whole range of procedures at our disposal, from mystery calls via mystery letters and mystery e-mails right through to mystery shopping.
Ideal for Benchmarking
Mystery analyses are particularly suitable if the intention is to carry out a benchmarking of various service providers (also, for example, as the basis for managing a bonus system). At the same time, it is also possible in this way to check the service levels of rival providers/suppliers, since mystery tests can also be conducted without the agreement of the respective company.
However, mystery analyses are also extremely suitable as a basis for staff training measures that respond to need, and as a way of subsequently checking up on the implementation and effectiveness of these measures.
Remaining 100% Unrecognised
In order to guarantee the above-mentioned objectivity and comparability of the facts obtained, mystery procedures have to pay particular attention to a range of aspects. Firstly, as the name 'mystery' already implies, the tester must under all circumstances remain unrecognised when carrying out a mystery analysis so as to be able to gather meaningful data.
However, although this initially sounds so straightforward, it frequently leads to the failure of mystery projects. For example, when carrying out a mystery test involving a call centre, the test design has to take account of call routing and shift planning just as much as it does of the call centre's technical equipment, which for instance makes it possible to circumvent calling number suppression.
The project design becomes even more elaborate if one is conducting the test with stock data from real-life customer relations, and, for example, the intention is to check outbound calls as well as inbound ones. This is the reason why expertly conducted mystery analyses are among the most comprehensive and complicated studies one finds in market research.
Minimising the Influence of the Interviewer
Furthermore, it is particularly important in the case of mystery surveys to minimise tester bias, since the tester conducts the test and then records it themselves. In order to conduct the test to a high standard, it is thus essential to use experienced professional testers who have been coordinated so that they use a uniform method of assessment in accordance with precisely defined guidelines.
In order that the individual tester's influence on the test situation (and thus the test result) should remain as small as possible, each unit of the test is conducted by different testers. The above-mentioned coordination guarantees that different testers assess a fact in the same way.
Professional Testers
Thirdly, the person who's doing the testing is of course of crucial importance too. At least with regard to sociodemographic characteristics, the selection of testers must fit the content of the test and the customer profile so that the test situation can be carried out under realistic conditions, and above all remain credible.
Testers must naturally always be well prepared, and thus trained intensively to meet the respective requirements of the project. Nonetheless, test situations with a more complex content presuppose some communicative and argumentative skills that aren't possessed by every potential tester per se, and which can't necessarily be passed on by training either.
Standardised Data Collection Protocols
So as to ultimately guarantee uniform and standardised information gathering, the data collection protocol must contain precise instructions for assessment with detailed assessment guidelines that leave no room for interpretation.
In order to achieve this, the data gathering protocols generally contain nothing but closed questions. Open comments are appropriate solely to describe disruptive factors or special characteristics of the test situation.