Mystery Shopping & Compliance Experts

Centrebound offers affordable, flexible and effective multichannel mystery shopping and competitor benchmarking. We offer bespoke mystery shopping and auditing solutions that deliver unbiased insight into your customer’s journey.

Our experienced and vetted agents objectively measure customer interactions against your Key Performance Indicators using bespoke surveys. This information, coupled with the experience of our customer service and sales consultants will give you the opportunity to;

• Increase Sales Revenue
• Increase Compliance
• Stay Ahead Of The Competition
• Improve Customer Service
• Maximise Customer Retention

We are committed to working closely with our clients to build mystery shopping solutions that are configured to specifically support your businesses goals and objectives.

Today’s customers interact with your business via an increasing number of contact channels. We are passionate about multichannel service excellence and consistency. Centrebound’s expertise in mapping and measuring the increasingly complex customer journey from enquiry through to sales and service is what really sets us apart from other mystery shopping companies.

Whether your business requires location, phone or online-based mystery shopping, we can help. Video shopping, phone mystery shopping and online auditing reports are just some of the ways we help our clients improve their sales and service propositions.

We have extensive experience providing mystery shopping and competitor benchmarking services to a variety of industries including;

• Retail
• Rapid delivery providers
• Utilities
• Betting shops and bookmakers
• Estate agencies
• Office space
• Housing services
• Events and conferences
• Car dealerships
• Business to business (B2B)
• Wedding venues
• Call centres

The unique approach we take to understanding your needs, and providing a bespoke service, is where we set ourselves apart. The years of experience gained by our consultants, in our respective fields, means Centrebound can provide specialist support and work with your business to develop a relationship that will bring tangible benefits.

Centrebound offers affordable, flexible and effective multichannel mystery shopping that adds real value to our clients. Our telephone mystery shopping, online mystery shopping and store mystery shopping enables you to focus on areas that will increase customer satisfaction and generate additional revenue.

Centrebound also provides customer service competitor benchmarking. Taking your KPI’s and measuring your performance against these and the performance of your competitors provides an excellent opportunity to understand where your business sits in the competitive marketplace. Using this information we are able to support your key improvement areas and identify where your customer service proposition can be developed.

The reports provided are bespoke to each of our clients, based on your goals and objectives. The performance packs are designed and produced by our experts to match your needs, to ensure the most efficient and clear reporting is available at all times.

Reacting to your customers is key and our mystery shopping, competitor benchmarking and expertly produced analytics give you the tools you need to stay one step ahead.

Centrebound Mystery Shopping Agents

We apply our ethos of great service to our employees and mystery shopping agents. We only select the best candidates from a multi-stage recruitment process that includes not only literacy, observational and attention to detail tests but a passion for customer service too.

Our established mystery shopping agents are regularly reviewed, audited and feedback is provided to ensure the quality of our surveys and work remains first class. This is one of the many reasons our clients have found the feedback we supply helps their service continue to improve.

We’re proud to be rated Excellent via Trustpilot. Here’s what our Mystery Shopping Agents say about working with Centrebound.

Measuring Your Organisation’s Performance with Mystery Shopping

Being able to effectively measure your organisation’s performance is essential. Understanding your customer’s experience of your business is vital for you to improve. Mystery shopping plays a key role in delivering actionable insights that will help your business achieve its goals and objectives.

Mystery shopping data for your business can be gathered and shared in securely accessed reports. The mystery shopping reports can highlight opportunities to increase performance in sales, service, compliance and details areas where training and further support could be a benefit. The bespoke reports produced detail the mystery shopping results in a clear and easily actionable format. They ensure deliverable results can begin immediately on the back of the mystery shopping surveys.

The mystery shopping reports are securely accessed and can be produced as regularly as you require, during and after, each mystery shopping exercise. These, coupled with your own understanding and our expert support, mean immediate actions can be offered, to ensure the most effective impact possible.

Contact us for more information about how we can help you with your mystery shopping project.

What is mystery shopping?

Mystery shopping is typically used by businesses including retailers, bars and restaurants, and entertainment venues to measure the quality of the customer experience and to collect information about products and services.

Mystery shoppers or secret shoppers are employed to test the service in shops and businesses by pretending to be a customer.

Businesses need to carry out regular monitoring to ensure customer experience isn’t a mystery. They need to know what the customer experience was like for a typical customer. One of the best ways to find that out is to use mystery shopping also known as secret shopper services to ask people to go and buy their products, order groceries from their website, drink in their bars, stay in their hotels or eat meals in their restaurants. Other mystery shopping scenarios can include asking questions of customer service staff, submitting a complaint and reporting back on their experience.

When asked how do you check standards stay high, John Eckbert, the CEO of Five Guys Europe responded; “Mystery shopping every store twice a week”. He highlighted how mystery shopping is a fantastic way to ensure all team members are focused on the same thing and utilises the insights to incentivise his teams to be the best.

Want to run a successful business? Mystery shop your standards!

What is mystery shopping used for?

Mystery shopping can be used in lots of different situations to measure particular areas businesses are looking to focus on. A few examples where mystery shopping is used;

Compliance: A mystery shopper aged 18-21 will attempt to buy age restricted goods such as alcohol and check whether he or she is asked for ID, as per the retailer’s Challenge 25 policy. The compliance check can be extended to several other situations too such as attending the cinema to check whether a youngster buying tickets for an adult movie is 18 years of age or above.

Sales Processes: Ensuring staff are carrying out sales processes and techniques they have been trained to do is another area where mystery shopping is used. For example sales staff in a shop may have been trained to upsell particular products or ensure the brand story is communicated to the customer. Mystery shopping is used for measuring the sales staff performance by the mystery shopper posing as a customer to verify whether the staff member is doing what they are trained to do.

Competition: Mystery shopping can be used to measure a business’s competitor. Mystery shoppers are hired to report on a competition’s merchandise, offers, sales processes or any other area of interest.

Mystery shopping helps to meet customer expectations

• In an increasingly challenging business environment, understanding your customer is only the first step. To truly meet their expectations and thrive amidst uncertainty, putting customer experience at the core of your business model.
• According to a 2021 Adobe-commissioned study by Forrester Consulting, businesses that prioritised customer experience in their business models saw 1.7 times the revenue growth year-over-year, compared to businesses that did not.
• Mystery shopping helps businesses prioritise customer experience by providing objective, unbiased insight. Businesses often think they know what their customer experience is, but mystery shopping can often provide insight the business didn’t know was an issue.
• Using mystery shoppers rather than real customers helps measure like-for-like. Using a consistent set of metrics and professional mystery shoppers ensures objectivity and eliminates subjective views.  This is particularly important when staff bonuses are linked to customer experience metrics.

What is a mystery shopper?

When you sign up to become a mystery shopper you’ll get to select different mystery shopping assignments that suit you and your availability. Mystery shopping assignments can involve visiting a store, asking staff questions about a product, find a particular item of  stock, or take an interest in how long the queues are at the tills. In other words, act in just the same way as any other customer might be. The only difference the mystery shopper will fill in a questionnaire about their shopping experience.

Other examples of mystery shopping assignments include ordering groceries from online food home delivery companies and reporting on the delivery service you experienced.

Mystery shopping involves a variety of skills such as reporting, attention to detail, information gathering, analysis and role playing. Companies want to know how all aspects of their business are perceived by the public. They carry out mystery shopping programmes as great service helps to drive sales.

If you’re new to the concept of mystery shopping now is a great time to become a mystery shopper. Becoming a mystery shopper (also known as a secret shopper or auditor) is a great way to make money on a flexible, part time basis.

Contact us for more information about how we can help you on your mystery shopping journey.