Knowledge is power. From the corporate level to your individual retail locations, our customer experience measurements will unleash your company’s potential for building customer delight and profitability.

BestMark Understands the Retail Industry

While your company may initially bring customers through your door with advertising, promotions, or other forms of messaging, the success of your business inevitably falls squarely on the shoulders of your management and associates who directly interact with your customers every day.

According to a comprehensive national survey on customer service conducted by the National Retail Federation, 99% percent of shoppers said that customer service was at least somewhat important when deciding to make a purchase. At the same time, only 16% of shoppers reported being "extremely satisfied" with their most recent customer service experience. It is especially critical in today’s economically challenging environment to differentiate your company by offering superior customer experiences. That’s why leading retail companies, (such as Best Buy, Target, Macy’s, Ace Hardware, etc.) have partnered with BestMark.

At BestMark, we take a holistic approach to achieving customer value, delight and loyalty. In addition to mystery shopping, BestMark offers its retail clients an array of other customer surveying methodologies and feedback options designed to help them view their products, services and brand from a variety of perspectives.

The BestMark Advantage - Retail Mystery Shopping & Experience Management

With over two decades of experience, we are experts in measurement design and helping organizations understand exactly what actions they should take to improve their customers’ experiences. At BestMark, we understand operations, technology, and research, and we know what it takes to implement an exceedingly effective customer experience measurement program for retail organizations:

• Holistic Approach. At BestMark, we take a holistic approach to achieving customer value, delight and loyalty. In addition to mystery shop and compliance auditing programs, BestMark offers its retail clients an array of other customer surveying methodologies and feedback options designed to help them view their products, services and brand from a variety of perspectives. (See our Services & Solutions)
• Vast geographical coverage. We have field representatives (mystery shoppers, compliance auditors, and exit interviewers) where you need them - in over 10,000 cities and towns across the country.
• Top quality with 100% completion rate. Many companies claim a completion rate of 100%, but at BestMark, we never break our promises. Our promised completion rate is 100% — no exceptions, no excuses. On top of that, the quality and accuracy of our data is the best in the industry. (See the details around our Quality Assurance Processes)
• Superior retail mystery shop survey format. The structure of BestMark's retail mystery shops is based on our proprietary survey format, a dramatic departure from traditional methods of collecting mystery shopper research data. Instead of asking a series of generic and potentially subjective questions, a BestMark behaviors-based shop enables our clients to pinpoint the very attributes and behaviors proven to drive customer delight, effective selling techniques and other critical performance attributes.
• Extensive training. Before our field representatives visit your locations or speak with your employees or customers, they will be trained, tested and certified on your specific program. Our field representatives will know exactly what to look and listen for, and we will ensure that all of your employees/locations are evaluated objectively, consistently, and accurately. We know how training, instructions, and certification for retail mystery shopping programs must be different from auditing and from exit interviewing, and we are experts on the most effective methodologies for all three measurement programs.
• Direct one-on-one management of field representatives. Many companies subcontract the field visit scheduling process and even the quality editing process out to businesses that offer support services. BestMark never uses sub-contractors. Our dedicated staff of in-house schedulers and editors speak one-on-one with our field representatives every day; this ensures that our field representativesfully understand specific requirements and receive continual coaching and recognition to better produce actionable feedback for you.
• Competitive Pricing. Our phenonmenal quality does not equate to high costs. Due to the rules-based systems and efficient processes we have developed over the years, we can offer our clients the best of both worlds: superior services and competitive prices.

Examples of Retail Questions We Can Answer:

• Are your employees building rapport and emotional connections with customers?
• What could you do to ensure fewer customers leave without making a purchase?
• What is your competition offering that your customers wish you offered and vice-versa?
• Are your employees asking customers the right questions and ensuring they match the right products to each customer’s individual needs?
• Are your employees correctly informing customers about your products, services, and/or policies?
• Are customers of every age, ethnicity, and gender receiving the same exceptional level of customer service?
• How engaged are your employees, and how can you optimally improve their engagement?
• Is your inventory appropriately placed on the selling floor and available for customer purchase?
• Are promotional signs, displays, and other types of marketing materials present and correctly positioned within your stores?
• Which locations within your organization are consistent shining examples of offering customer delight, and what are their best practices?
• What company changes will result in the highest return on investment (e.g., is it more important to spend resources on shortening customer wait time or on further customer service training)?
• And many, many, more. . .

BestMark's retail mystery shopping programs enable our clients to:

• Understand exactly what customer delight-driving behaviors look and sound like
• Align company-wide focus on improving the customers’ experiences, resulting in higher sales through an increased number of customer visits
• Discover if customers are receiving consistently superior customer service at every location and/or customer touchpoint
• Identify gaps in training needs
• Improve suggestive selling and provide customers the information they want, resulting in an increased number of items purchased per customer visit
• Ensure compliance with legal requirements to maintain a positive brand image and avoid legal issues
• And much, much, more. . .

Whether we manage your program for you or you just need advice and guidance on how to design, implement, and/or report on internal measurements, we can customize a customer experience measurement program for your specific needs, and we can help you understand which critical opportunities you need to address for your business.

Actionable Insight

Collecting and aligning data only provides value if that information is actually used to improve performance at each location, so it is critical that the data is useful at the operator level. With that in mind, BestMark created GuestLink ™, a proprietary web-based reporting system that allows clients to create, update and track data at all levels within the organization for performance feedback and coaching. BestMark clients are also able to dynamically create ad hoc reports on the fly and update customized "Action Plans." When managers of customer-facing employees directly access shop, audit, or customer survey results via GuestLink ™, coaching and recognition (as well as solutions selling reinforcement) can occur at the front lines almost immediately.

GuestLink™ Customer Experience Intelligence Features Interactive Dashboards Performance Scorecards Dynamic Query Drill-Down Individual Customer Experience Reports Strengths & Opportunities Reports Key Performance Indicator (KPIs) Tracking High-Impact Standard Reports