Ex. Joy sees her manager, Bill, put a few pieces of jewelry in his pockets before leaving the store for the night. She knows he didn’t pay for them and is concerned that he might be stealing. Because he is Joy’s superior, Joy feels that she cannot confront him. Instead, Joy calls the loss prevention hotline number posted in the break room and leaves a message with details of what she saw. The Mershimer Group can launch an investigation into the incident.

For more information on our loss prevention programs, please click here.

The Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the mystery shopping industry. If the MSPA does not list a member company on their website, you run the risk of them not being a legitimate mystery shopping company. This is your best resource to find credible mystery shopping companies and to find more information on avoiding mystery shopping scams.

Have any other tips? Leave them in the comments section! We’d love to hear them!

In the event of a new product or service launch, data can help a company gauge how it will be received, how successful (or unsuccessful) it will be and what challenges await them on the other side of the product launch. Test or market data is helpful to your company’s “leap” because it softens the blow when you hit the ground, and it gives you the agility to react to obstacles.

We believe in looking before you leap. Let us help you with the data collection, so you can focus on what’s ahead.

For more information on data collection, please email Info@hsbrands.com.

Interview link.

Yes/No mystery shopping questions are primarily used for scoring. If the mystery shopper answers “Yes” for a question where that answer is considered positive, points are awarded for that answer.

For example, “Did an associate greet you when entering the store?” A “yes” answer would be worth the 5 points because the associate did what was expected of them. If the shopper was not greeted, those 5 points would be lost.

These types of questions are always great for “incentivized” mystery shopping programs. If employees know that they will get a bonus for having stellar mystery shopping results every quarter, they will be more likely to pay attention to detail and provide excellent customer service to everyone who walks into the store, including the mystery shoppers.

Narratives are great for clients who want to know exactly what it’s like to shop at their stores in “storybook” format. They value the opinion of the mystery shopper, what they see, what things stick out to them during their customer experience and how each part of the mystery shop transpired.

For example, “I walked into the store and was greeted by Amanda, a tall, brunette girl. She told me about the promotions running that weekend.”

Both mystery shopping questions give you the same information, but there is a rhyme and reason for utilizing both types of questions. Definitive answer questions like Yes/No are used for scoring. Narratives are used for recounting the experience and providing details on top of the regular Yes/No answers.

What types of questions do you prefer? Are you a scoring person or a descriptive person when it comes to receiving mystery shop results? Let us know in the comments section.

Happier employees are going to grow the business. There’s no doubt about that. They are ambassadors for the brand, whether they are on the clock or not. This is why companies must measure employee satisfaction on a consistent basis.

Employee satisfaction surveys can be used to identify issues that can improve company culture.

Companies can:
- Find out how happy their employees are in their general setting.
- Decide which tasks could be outsourced, if needed.
- Give employees the power to communicate about an operational issue, policy or procedure and improve it if they see fit.
- Explore what benefits options would be most important to the employees if added.
- Find out why employees might want to leave your company to work for a competitor.

Check out the ways in which we can collect Employee Satisfaction Surveys here.

In every franchise system, there is a franchisor (The company who owns the brand and sells franchises of that brand), and a group of franchisees (The business operators who pay to operate the brand the franchisor owns). A franchisor makes money in two ways; selling new franchises and collecting a percentage of their franchisees’ sales, also known as “franchise royalties.” The franchise royalty payments are made so that the franchisee can continue to use the company name, product recipes, any trademarks owned and the brands operational systems. Sometimes franchisees decide to under report their sales in order to dodge the royalty and marketing fund payments to the franchisor. This makes it harder for the franchisor to expand the brand, due to reduction in money available for advertising and operational tools. The short story here is that it makes the franchise system less profitable.

The Mershimer Group helps franchisors target where trouble may be coming from within their franchisee system. The royalty assurance program includes various components meant to promote integrity in franchisee reporting, and will likely involve some or all of the following components:

• Completion of a yield or other analysis to identify scope of underreporting, and identify problem locations.
• Franchisee education and awareness communications.
• Unannounced store/restaurant awareness visits.
• Integrity shopping to ensure all transactions are recorded on POS system.
• Underreporting investigations meant to document underreporting methods.
• Royalty audits to document “back of the house” underreporting.

The goal of this program is to reveal which franchisees are potentially underreporting their sales, how they are doing this, and about how much they are withholding.

Royalty assurance will help individual franchisees by increasing the amount of franchise royalties and advertising funds paid into the system to grow the brand. Any work or money a franchisor puts toward operational excellence or branding, a franchisee will benefit from. And if the franchisees are making money, so is the franchisor and it creates a successful cycle of higher returns on investment.

So Tom wrote this “blueprint for all things we would need a software system to do in that moment,” as he explained it. This is the original piece of paper:

Identifying the functionality of the software seemed to be the easiest hurdle. Finding people to actually develop the idea was more of a challenge. “We shopped around to four or five different software development companies. I gave everyone the same piece of paper with my idea on it and they all came back with some modification of another system or an idea built on top of another web-based system. I met Tony Felos and John Hsu and they wanted to create the system completely in web language, which would be easier to customize and allowed for creativity to happen. That changed the game for me,” Mills described.

SASSIE was created in 2001 with Tom’s help and Tony and John’s technical expertise. Tom said “we were the only mystery shopping company to have it until 2003 when they opened up the software to other mystery shopping providers.”

Today, SASSIE is continually evolving with client needs and is one of the most popular mystery shopping software systems on the market. Tom is still heavily involved in the development of his version of the software that we call “Sherlock” and is an industry export on the program. For more information on our software, please check out our reporting video.

Check out our new mystery shop reporting video that explains some of our most popular reports:

Mystery Shoppers – Can you give us some success stories on social media? Can you give us another 5 Reasons Why Mystery Shoppers Should be Active on Social Media?

HS Brands International on Social Media:

This information can be used in a court of law and the PI may be called upon to testify on behalf of their client. Miller also added, “PIs are generally required to have a certain amount of qualifying experience or number of working investigative hours, which needs to be documented and provided to the licensing authority prior to obtaining a PI license.” Candidates must also go through a complete background check. Typically PIs come from a loss prevention, law enforcement (Federal or local), security, military, police or intelligence background.

So what are the benefits of hiring a mystery shopping provider with a PI license? Well any type of mystery shop where the results are actionable (meaning the results are used for actions such as prosecuting, terminating employees, or documenting behaviors discovered as a result of a mystery shop) should be conducted by a licensed private investigator to limit the liability to the client. Another benefit to a business owner is to ensure the professionalism of the people who conduct audits, investigations and interviews at your locations. HS Brands Private Investigator’s represent themselves on behalf of, or in conjunction with your company in most instances, and having a professional conducting work for you is of utmost importance, especially in situations where actions based on the results of an investigation may be challenged by an employee.

Requiring a PI to conduct mystery or integrity shops is a state-by-state decision, but in one state, the use of a PI in mystery shopping is required. See our Mystery Shopping in Nevada page for more information on how using a PI is an integral part of the mystery shopping industry in Nevada.

What do you think of Private Investigators now? Did we erase some of the stigmas for you? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Feel free to share the post with all of your mystery shopping friends and comment below if you have more tips to add. We’d love to read them!

All mystery shoppers need to be aware of this and avoid mystery shopping scams. A legitimate mystery shopping provider will be registered with the MSPA and will never ask you to cash a check or money order.

What are your thoughts on avoiding mystery shopping scams and scams that attack our industry’s credibility? We want to know. Post your comments in the section below.

Even though these numbers come from the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, I believe the number of people told of bad customer experience situation is closer to ten times the “good experience” number. Think about both a good and bad experience you have had… how many people did you tell about each scenario?

Mike Mershimer – COO
HS Brands InternationalI was just skimming this months INC. magazine, and discovered the following:
>The portion of customers who have walked out of a store because of poor customer service in the past 12 months is 64%.
>The share of customers who say they would spend more at companies that provide superior customer service is 70%
>Average number of people a customer will tell about a good customer service experience is 9
>Average number of people a customer will tell about a bad customer service experience is 16

Even though these numbers come from the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, I believe the number of people told of bad customer experience situation is closer to ten times the “good experience” number. Think about both a good and bad experience you have had… how many people did you tell about each scenario?

• Certified & tested – All Service Sleuth shoppers are tested before they are allowed to work for us. They have to pass a writing test before being allowed to take a shop. A lot of other shoppers are MSPA certified too. They are either Gold or Silver certified depending on the level they chose to complete. MSPA certified shoppers are the most trusted and revered in the industry.
• The rating system – Our rating system is a little more complex than Siskel and Ebert’s thumbs. Shoppers are critiqued based upon their completed shops and receive a score ranging from 1-10 (1 being negative, 10 being the best). With each score shoppers also receive comments from our editors with their rating to improve future shops.
• Global database – HS Brands is a global mystery shopping company, therefore, we have mystery shoppers in most corners of the world making it easier for us to complete shops in hard to reach areas. We are always making a continuous effort to expand and enrich our database.
• Loyalty counts – Some of our shoppers have been with us for over 10 years!
• We have shoppers in Nevada – Most mystery shopping companies will not tell you that Nevada is treated a little differently than most states as far as mystery shopping is concerned. Mystery shoppers in Nevada have to be an employee (not a sub-contractor like all other states and countries) of a licensed Private Investigator to work in Nevada or else the company commissioning the shops could face fines up to $2500 per shop. We have legal mystery shoppers who are employees of Tom Mills (CEO of HS Brands), a licensed Private Investigator in the state of Nevada. See this page on mystery shopping in Nevada to get more details.
• Shoppers simply love what they do – Our shoppers put a lot of time, effort and detail into the reports that they write for our clients. This gives the client a first hand look at what is happening at the most important level…the customer facing side of their business.

A typical Loss Prevention Program consists of:
Store or restaurant standards audits
Theft and loss investigations
Loss Prevention Awareness Meetings at store level
“We Care” business abuse hotline for employees to call in anonymously
Loss Prevention Policy and Procedures Development
Mystery or Integrity Shopping

All of these things can be fully outsourced to The Mershimer Group, combined with an in-house team or used as a la carte services.

A Loss Prevention Program can have a great impact on a business’ bottom line. Creating an environment that is focused on loss prevention and encourages your employees to get into a loss prevention mindset often turns the tide in a restaurant. Much like “reality” TV, when a person or employee knows someone is watching they act differently. This is the purpose of the loss prevention awareness meetings and store audits. From franchise owners to busboys, the message we send is clear: If you’re stealing, there is a good chance you will get caught because everyone is focused on preventing loss and are watching closely.

A loss prevention program can reduce a restaurant’s food cost gap with great results. For example, The Mershimer Group was instrumental in reducing a 500-unit chain’s food gap from an average of 3% to 1%. This goal was achieved in part by utilizing the aforementioned loss prevention program in full, which proved to be very successful for the chain. The Mershimer Group can also help you reduce shrink, expose employee integrity issues, improve customer service and identify areas of vulnerability, which may point to a need for loss prevention or standards auditing.

If you have any interest in The Mershimer Group Loss Prevention Program or individual services, please do not hesitate to contact HS Brands International at 800-723-1150 X121, or send an email to mike@mershimer.com

The top three drivers for investing in customer experience management are:
1. Improve customer retention – (42 %)
2. Improve customer satisfaction – (33 %)
3. Increase cross-selling and up-selling (32 %)
Source: Aberdeen report – Customer Experience Management: Engaging Loyal Customers to Evangelize Your Brand

A dissatisfied consumer will tell between 9 and 15 people about their experience. About 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people.
Source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC

Yes, we all know how important customer service is and stats like these get thrown around a lot, but what are companies actively doing about it? In the digital world we live in, it’s easy for customers to take to social media and create a whirlwind of negative chatter within the online communities.

The first step is measurement. Have a starting place or plan of action to really get things going. Measure where you are now, so you know if your efforts are working when you measure them later.

Make a plan. Setting a mystery shopping program in place for your restaurant is important since it gives you a starting point and something to act upon when coaching your employees on providing better customer service. It also is a good measurement tool to follow through and look back to gauge how successful the coaching was.

Mystery shopping gives you balanced, actionable feedback and quantitative results in the reports. Compare and contrast, hold contests, trend the best performing locations and give them incentives to keep themselves there. These are all things you can do with a mystery shopping program that will increase the number of repeat customers.

Determine your starting point, implement processes, then track results and ask yourself, “how important is customer service really?” It can make a colossal difference in the way you do business and how you treat customers if you make customer service an operational focus. Post in the comments section to tell us how important customer service is to you and your company.

Committed to company growth and development, Tom Mills, CEO of HS Brands, says, “HS Brands is achieving the goal that we set out for ourselves. We’ve opened four international offices in three years and we have the momentum and drive that attracts global business.”

HS Brands International has offices in Boston, Las Vegas-USA, Switzerland, India, Turkey and Argentina.

HS Brands is a global mystery shopping, loss prevention and data collection company. In addition to mystery shopping and loss prevention, other services include audits, investigations, business standard evaluations, integrity shopping and franchise royalty assurance solutions. HS Brands is comprised of Service Sleuth and The Mershimer Group. HS Brands was included on the 2011 Inc. 500|5000 list. For more information on HS Brands International services, please visit www.HSBrands.com.