Your Mystery Research Survey –

as unique as your company

When measuring customer orientation, expert advice by the salesperson is particularly important, but other aspects such as service, store and human resources are also important factors:

CUSTOR’s Mystery Research and the Customer Orientation Index (COI) provide you with an integrated, holistic tool that measures all these aspects, as well as adhering to your given service standards at the customer interfaces, detailing vulnerabilities, and providing recommendations for action to address them.

  • With its holistic approach CUSTOR’s Mystery Research provides you with a deep insight into how individual sales or service units are perceived by your customers – across the entire customer journey: from recognizing the store and its equipment to the employees’ demeanour and the actual customer consultation. On site, by phone or online.
  • The four core areas consulting&sales, service, store and human resources with their partial dimensions are condensed to the CUSTOR Customer Orientation Index, the key figure for the customer orientation of your company.
  • Due to the detailed analysis and presentation of the results, the priorities of actions required can be identified immediately and improvement measures can promptly be set up.
  • Through in-depth evaluations, e.g. at the branch level and periodic repetition, an internal benchmarking can be established.
  • Internally, the test results have a motivating effect on executives and employees due to the inherent competitive character of a mystery research study.
  • Darüber hinaus können Prüfzertifikate und Gütesiegel in der Außendarstellung des eigenen Unternehmens werblich eingesetzt werden, sie geben potenziellen Kunden vor deren Kaufentscheidung zusätzliche Sicherheit.

CUSTOR’s mystery research provides you with the following content in particular:

  • quality of advice
  • sales conversation
  • expertise
  • staff availability
  • Store design and atmosphere, external image
  • workplace
  • basic services
  • accessibility
  • convenience
  • information
  • social competence of employees
  • Commitment and initiative of the employees
  • demeanor and representation of employees

According to a comprehensive weighting and calculation scheme the collected data and facts are summarized to the CUSTOR Customer Orientation Index.
Since each company focuses on other aspects, the index (i.e. its content and the weighting of individual criteria) is customer tailored to the project-relevant requirements in close cooperation with the client.

In order to generate external benchmarks, stores / branches of the respective local (structural) competitors can also be included in the survey. Due to the direct interference in the competitor’s business processes, the observance of national and international guidelines for mystery research (ADM, ESOMAR) is of particular importance.

Due to a higher market transparency, employment contract regulations and compliance regulations, mystery research in b2b markets makes particularly high demands on the test design. Furthermore, the recruitment of the testers is crucial. (→ further information)

Even in times of category management, sales (channel) analysis is important for product managers: where and how are their products positioned and recommended by the sales personnel? Are agreed levels maintained with regard to quality of advice, service, product availability (out of stock issue) or price? These questions can also be answered with a mystery research survey.

Depending on the channel to be tested, the mystery tests are performed by experienced testers either on-site, by phone or online.

In the case of an evaluation planned at the store level, every business transaction to be tested in each store to be checked should be evaluated at least twice; in the case of an evaluation at higher organizational levels, a smaller number of tests might be sufficient.

Depending on the organizational size and structure of the client, mystery research can be conducted on a sample basis or as a full survey.

  • methodical consultation, study design and project management
  • kick-off-meeting with the client
  • design of test situations and roles
  • development of standardized memory protocols
  • recruitment and briefing of the testers
  • test consultations and memory protocols
  • data check and validation
  • data analysis at the contracted evaluation levels
  • calculation of the CUSTOR Customer Orientation Index
  • chart report and certificates in CUSTOR format after consultation with the client’s facilitiy
  • presentation of the results at the client
  • quality seal (optional)
  • Implementation workshop / accompaniment for change processes (optional)

We will gladly make you an individual offer – just feel free to contact us:

Stefan Heinisch

fon:  +49 911 4787 69-23
fax:   +49 911 4787 69-24
heinisch@custor.de