Using Mystery Shopping to Improve CX

In June 2022, Norton Norris (Nn) launched a comprehensive mystery shopping initiative for a nation-wide group of supplemental education centers. The project was commissioned by the client’s central office to support their franchisee’s efforts to deliver superior customer service while maintaining the highest level of ethics and integrity during their initial program presentation to the student and parent.

Customized Mystery Shopping Program

Working together with our partner’s leadership group, the Nn team created a shopping form that mapped the path a parent would take when inquiring about enrolling their student in the supplemental education program at one of their centers. This included a myriad of customer service data points (e.g., response time to the inquiry, ability to build rapport, taking a genuine interest in the child) as well as sales-oriented feedback like asking questions to understand the family’s current situation and needs, explain the enrollment steps.

The result was a thorough interview that evaluators would participate in, record the conversation, and then complete 80+ questions. The individual questionnaires were available immediately to central office leadership and the trends were graphed and highlighted via custom dashboards.

Results Revealed Opportunities for Improvement

After 4 months of shopping and the completion of 57 mystery shops, the Nn team tallied initial results and trends, met with client leadership and then paused shopping shortly to allow client to socialize the results with their franchisee’s. Using the results from the first four months of shopping, their trainers called a “safety stop” of sorts and stressed to their 80+ centers
the extreme importance of building rapport, explaining the steps to enroll, and taking a genuine interest in not only the customer/parent, but also the student/client.

Two months after their leadership chose to heighten awareness of this simple but impactful shift, the Nn team pulled results and crafted the comparison chart below. The results underscore what can be gleaned from mystery shopping and how quickly it can be leveraged to improve performance.

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