Success Story #6:
Mystery Shopping for High Sales and Service Performance
Organization: Large West Coast Financial Institution
Background: The organization desired to implement a proven method of coaching its retail bank employees toward a higher level of performance in the sales and service arena. Monarch Performance Group, LLC (MPG) worked collaboratively with the organization to design training, coaching, and a mystery shop system that would directly reinforce and measure specific skill-sets associated with successful selling behaviors for retail bankers.
The baseline mystery shop score for all participants upon implementation of the system in the spring of 2005 was a 37% success rate on composite criteria. Through on-going performance coaching efforts from the organization’s branch managers, combined with supportive coaching reinforcement by MPG, the client experienced a 33% increase in the overall mystery shop score by the beginning of 2006. Monthly scores steadily increased throughout the calendar years of 2006 and 2007, with organization composite scores at the close of 2007 consistently in the 90% range.
The client attributes on-going success with campaign achievement, new money goals, expanding customer relationships, and customer retention rates in part due to the mystery shopping and coaching initiative.
At the conclusion of the second year of the process a sampling of the company’s managers were asked to evaluate the impact of the mystery shopping initiative, and to share what they and their teams had learned as a result.
A summary of the questions and the managers’ answers follows:
1. How have you used the MPG mystery shopping process to coach your team members to higher performance?
“Because the mystery shop conversation is digitally recorded, we can sit down with an individual, listen to her shop, and create a specific action plan for improvement. We have also been able to use the recorded shops in our branch team meetings to promote overall group learning, and to brainstorm ideas for making our customer interactions more targeted and productive. Additionally, because our partners at MPG listen to every single shop, we have been able to use the coaching tips they’ve provided to help enhance individual and team success.”
2. What parts of the mystery shop process were easiest for you to coach, and which were the most difficult?
“The easiest skills to coach were increasing the use of open-end questions throughout the sales conversation, working to identify the immediate customer need, and asking for the customer’s business. Because individuals can actually hear if they are asking open or closed-ended questions, or if they ask specific benefit-oriented questions, it’s easier to zero-in on improving those skills. What is a bit more difficult is coaching an individual’s personality and communication traits, i.e., tone of voice, pace of speech, grammar, if they take too long to make a point, etc. These traits are deeply ingrained and take a fair amount of commitment and discipline to improve; but again, being able to actually listen to the recorded shop and then practice alternative means of communication style really helps.”
3. How have you been able to use trend information from the mystery shop scores to enhance overall branch performance?
“Looking at the branch trend lines has allowed us to celebrate and reinforce the areas in which the branch performs well and also to mine-down in those areas to become even better. For example, when a branch team has mastered asking benefit-oriented questions, they can then brainstorm ideas for using that skill-set to uncover a wide variety of customer needs, not just the specific request a customer first presents. In the areas where a branch is trending lower, that particular area has become the focus of additional practice, study, training, and coaching.”
4. In what ways has the mystery shopping initiative helped you improve as a manager and a coach?
“The mystery shopping process has helped create greater consistency around branch coaching, coupled with specific guidelines for having a productive coaching conversation. As a result, employees know what to expect from a coaching session, they know it’s framed in a positive way, and they are more open and receptive to being coached. As a manager, the process allows me to have objective and behaviorally-based conversations with my employees, and to quickly target areas of high performance, as well as specific areas for improvement. It’s a real time saver and a credible source for coaching!”
5. What is the most important lesson you’ve learned about employee coaching as a result of the mystery shopping process?
“We’ve learned that every employee has their own way of learning and preferences for receiving information. Most employees respond better to being asked for their ideas regarding the enhancement of their own performance versus being told what to do by the manager. We’ve also discovered that the consistency of coaching conversations is key to increasing performance. You can’t just do it once in awhile; it needs to become a way of life in order for the branch to have sustained success.”
6. How has the mystery shopping process helped build your branch team?
“Because everyone gets shopped at some point, the team knows that they’re all in it together. Team members help each other with specific skill-sets by practicing and role-playing. The team is more curious about our complete line of product and service solutions and they want to learn as much as they can in order to make the best recommendations to our customers. The process has helped build team member confidence and camaraderie.”
>>> What Satisfied Customers Are Saying About Mystery Shopping Solutions