Mystery Shopping with Kent Homechoice
Recently, Smarter Digital Services (SDS) conducted a comprehensive mystery shopping project for Kent Homechoice, a partnership of Kent and Medway local councils along with Registered Providers.
The Kent Homechoice Project
Kent Homechoice offers a vital service, helping customers apply to the housing register, search for available properties, make housing enquiries, and find advice about housing options.
The local councils within this partnership wanted to ensure they were providing the best possible service to their customers. This is where SDS stepped in to carry out a mystery shopping project.
What is Mystery Shopping?
Mystery shopping is a market research method where individuals, known as mystery shoppers, evaluate the quality of service, customer experience, and adherence to standards.
These mystery shoppers interact with the organisation based on specific scenarios and guidelines, providing valuable feedback on various aspects of the service. This evaluation can include:
- Customer Interaction: Assessing the professionalism and helpfulness of staff.
- Service Speed and Efficiency: Measuring waiting times for calls, callbacks, and email responses.
- Compliance and Knowledge: Evaluating the staff’s ability to provide accurate advice and information.
- Problem Resolution: Observing how effectively staff manage problems and complaints.
Mystery shoppers then feedback what they experienced to the organisation. This feedback can be used for performance evaluation, training purposes, and improving customer service.
Benefits of Mystery Shopping
Conducting mystery shopping offers numerous benefits:
- Insights into Customer Experience: By simulating real-world interactions, organisations can understand what customers encounter and identify areas for improvement.
- Evaluation of Service Quality: Assessing various aspects of service delivery helps to assess and maintain high service standards.
- Identification of Strengths and Weaknesses: Highlighting areas where the service excels and areas needing improvement.
- Employee Training and Development: Using feedback for targeted training initiatives.
- Quality Control and Consistency: Ensuring consistent service quality across different locations.
- Benchmarking: Comparing performance with other organisations to identify areas for improvement.
- Informed Decision-Making: Using insights for strategic decisions and resource allocation.
Our Approach
Not being housing experts, our team approached the project from the perspective of customers with no prior knowledge about their housing options. This fresh perspective allowed us to simulate real-world interactions and provide genuine insights into the customer experience.
Preparation and Delivery
Together with Kent Homechoice we prepared a detailed scenario, guidelines, and feedback templates. Our team used these to interact with the Kent Homechoice service over the telephone, via email and online. We recorded our experiences meticulously, ensuring that every interaction was documented. This process was repeated for each participating council.
The Outcome
The mystery shopping project for Kent Homechoice provided invaluable insights into the customer experience. Our detailed feedback highlighted strengths and pinpointed areas for improvement, enabling Kent Homechoice to enhance their service quality and customer interactions. Kent Homechoice a keen to repeat the mystery shopping exercise on a regular basis to ensure a consistent and high quality customer service.
Unlocking Insights
Mystery shopping is a powerful tool for any organisation looking to improve its service quality and customer experience. The project with Kent Homechoice showcased the effectiveness of this technique, providing actionable insights that will drive positive change. If you are interested in learning more about mystery shopping and this project please get in touch.
