When training your staff about the mystery shopping process in your organization, go over the importance of perception and the impact it has on the customer experience.
A debate recently started on social media concerning the color of a dress shown in a photograph.
When viewing a photo of the dress on screen, some people saw the color of the striped dress as gold and white, while others saw it as black and blue. Which was the correct combination?
Celebrities weighed in on Twitter, and scientific specialists were called in to be interviewed by the anchors of morning news programs, trying to get to the bottom of why we were seeing the dress differently. The debate raged on for more than a week, which is an eternity in the world of media today.
The point I want to make about this dress is not about its color or the percentage of people who think it’s one color scheme over the other. The point I want to make is:
[tweetthis]It doesn’t matter what color the dress is. What matters is what color the viewer perceives it to be.[/tweetthis]
In the world of mystery shopping, it is so important to train your staff to understand that it doesn’t matter if you think you are doing the things you should to create an exceptional customer experience; what matter is if your customers see it that way.
Recently a client called me to say that a teller at one of the bank branches she manages was sure she’d used her customer’s name 3 times in conversation, although her mystery shopping evaluation indicated otherwise. The client asked if there was anything we could do to award the teller the points she felt the teller deserved for the evaluation.
I explained to my client that the teller may very well have used the customer’s name the prescribed number of times during the transaction, but for some reason the customer did not “hear” their name being used. I asked if there was anything to be learned from the situation.
- Could the teller speak louder to ensure being heard?
- Should the teller have used the customer’s name more than 3 times?
- Could the teller try using a different approach regarding how a customer’s name is woven into conversation?
Perception is reality, and if the customer didn’t hear it or see it, or sees something other than what was intended, that is their belief, and not much is going to change that. It’s a lot like all those people who saw a gold and white dress while others saw one that was blue and black.
Are there tools you use to demonstrate how customers might perceive things differently as they do business with you?
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