Secret Shopper programs have become a popular tool for banks and credit unions to keep up with their customer service standards and performance management incentive triggers. These programs excel at capturing which company standards and beliefs have effectively translated into desired behavior and which have not. The following questions are critical to ensuring that buyer reviews truly capture the beliefs and behaviors that are most important to producing the desired results.
1. Number and type of open questions asked. If a sale is to be made, the MSR / CSR must be trained to display curious behavior. The employee should ask questions that require customers to respond with an experience or emotion. Questions with an affirmative or negative answer do not indicate how the customer feels about a product or experience with your institution or that of a competitor. Questions that start with “Have you ever had the experience of” or “Do you know what frustrates me about X?” And they end with “I guess that’s never happened to you” they work very well. Achieving the goal of having MSR / CSR that display this desired behavior requires extensive belief and behavior formation that is constantly reinforced by company culture.
2. Number and details of attempts to move from investigation to action. Buyer forms often contain generic language such as “the employee tried to close the sale” or “the employee recommended an additional product or service.” Often times, forms give employees credit for simply mentioning a product or describing a product’s features. It is critical that an MSR / CSR suggest the next action steps and attempt to move the customer to complete the sale. Measurement questions such as “the employee offered to drive me to an office to complete the account opening” or “the employee attempted to make an appointment to discuss the options and benefits of opening a new IRA account.”
3. Specific benefits of products or services presented. Most of the time, a buyer form will capture the MSR / CSR explanation of features such as “100% money back guarantee”, “no points” or “no account maintenance fees”, but does not capture how or if the employee presented the benefits that the client would derive from the product or service. The most useful assessment will capture the “for what” benefit statements. For example, “Our home equity and home equity loans offer the benefit of not having points (so) you don’t have to add an additional principle to your balance that you would have to pay interest on for the entire term of the loan.” Another example would be “our IRA accounts do not have maintenance fees (so) all the interest you earn is taken by you and you don’t have to pay it back as fees.”
4. Connections / benefits of the product or service relationship made. Often times, buyer forms contain generic language about attempted cross-selling, such as “MSR / CSR attempted to cross-sell additional products.” The best way to measure effective cross-selling beliefs and desired behavior is to ask what product relationships or cross-product benefits the employee offered. An example would be MSR / CSR explaining that by having a car loan with the bank / credit union along with a debit card checking account, you would receive an additional .25% reduction in the car loan rate (so that ) would have a lower monthly payment, pay less interest, and possibly reduce the total repayment period of the loan. Another example would be “MSR / CSR explained that by opening a checking and savings account I could set up a split direct deposit of my payroll so that some funds could automatically go into savings (so) I could start saving money with interest high on a budget that I can afford.
5. Details of how MSR / CSR applied for the business. Often times, mystery shopper reviews forget to capture whether the employee applied for a business. It’s almost impossible to capture business if you put all the burden on your customers to find and request it on their own. I can’t begin to tell you how many very proper and candid sales presentations I have witnessed in which the only thing that made a safe sale a decision was not the failure of the sales staff to simply finish the presentation by asking for the sale. It’s as simple as “I heard from your responses that this product gives you all the benefits you are looking for. Can I configure it for you now?” The buyer’s form should require the exact verbiage of how the MSR / CSR applied for the business.
In writing the 5 critical questions, I did not attempt to cover the entire potential area that Mystery / Secret Shopper inventories can focus on to illicitly measure desired behavior. For example, overcoming objections would be a complete course in itself. In writing these questions, I wanted to share my experience with developing effective purchase reviews and some of the most common mistakes. I applaud you for your commitment to your clients if you are currently participating in a secret shopper program. If you don’t, I assure you that there is one thing you can take to the bank or credit union and that is if you are not buying from your employees, contact your customers and I can assure you that your competition is. Why would anyone give the competition that kind of advantage?