You want to set up a mystery shopping program in your network, but you're wondering how regular it should be.
This is an important aspect of planning and budgeting your mystery shopping program. What's more, the implementation of a regular program will validate the relevance of the results.
To find your answer, and depending on your goal, you need to look at 2 very different aspects: frequency and volume of visits. We explain everything in this article.
What's the right frequency for mystery visits?
To determine the ideal frequency for a mystery shopping program, you first need to understand your objective. Are you embarking on mystery shopping to manage your teams, or to check that your standards are being applied?
Depending on your response, the optimum frequency will not be the same.
Frequency of visits to manage your teams
If you want to instill quality in your teams' day-to-day work while avoiding putting too much pressure on them, you'll need to increase the frequency of your mystery-shopping program. Surprising as it may seem, it's best to get your teams used to frequent mystery visits. Indeed, instituting a visit once a year or once a quarter will generate a great deal of stress in your teams, as they know that it will take them several months to make up for any non-conformities.
This will be THE decisive day when mistakes are not allowed.
Of course, your teams are supposed never to make a mistake when welcoming customers, but the reality on the ground can be nuanced. If everything is based on a single day's visit, you run the risk of creating frustration and a feeling of injustice. In such circumstances, it's hard to get your teams to adhere to the mystery shopping program.
However, setting up a program of frequent and regular mystery visits will give your teams the signal that mistakes may happen, but that there will always be other visits to correct them. You'll be setting up a continuous improvement process, pulling your teams up by their bootstraps and getting them all the more involved.
To reinforce your management policy, we advise you to introduce a monthly visit frequency.
A different rhythm of mystery visits for control
When you decide to set up a mystery shopping program to monitor compliance with your standards, you're more concerned with control. This is often the case with franchise networks. In our example, the franchisee is asked to comply with the brand's standards at the precise moment of the visit.
Here, it's not essential to create a monthly program, but quarterly planning may be sufficient. Note that it is possible to mix the 2 frequencies in a franchise network.
For example, the franchisor may decide to carry out a network monitoring program and supplement it with management visits requested by the franchisees themselves.
How much mystery shopping do you need?
As far as volume is concerned, the answer will be quicker. Ideally, you need an odd number so as not to end up with a 50/50 score. Likewise, it may seem obvious, but the more visits you make, the finer and more reliable your scores will be.
However, depending on whether your mystery visits are offline or online, you'll think differently.
It makes more sense to program a large number of online visits, as the scenarios can be very varied, depending on the number of possible itineraries.
On the other hand, multiplying the number of field visits is not necessarily the best strategy, as you can obtain highly reliable scores without blowing up the costs. Make at least 3 visits, and the results will start to speak for themselves.
As you can see, there are two main reasons why you might decide to go mystery shopping, and these will determine the frequency of your visits, which can be monthly or quarterly.
Similarly, the volume must be large enough to produce convincing results, but it doesn't have to be overabundant either, if only for cost reasons.
