Luxury Goods – Generate the perfect customer experience

Project topics and goals in the luxury segment

• Increasing customer satisfaction through more quality in customer contact, higher service orientation, and programs for customer centricity, and customer retention
• Increased sales through targeted development of sales staff in terms of their sales orientation and sales skills
• Determination of training needs and verification of training success through training success monitoring
• Competitor monitoring and generation of benchmark data
• International projects
• Investigations at the airport landside and airside
• Measuring and developing contact quality at all touchpoints along the customer journey
• Conducting audits to verify compliance with given standards, especially in the areas of corporate identity, CI, CD, sales, marketing, service

Mystery Shopping - Premium and Luxury Goods

The most frequently used instruments in the luxury sector are mystery research procedures, which are used to investigate all touchpoints along the customer journey.

Mystery research procedures are used to measure and develop all customer contact channels, in particular through test purchases, test visits, test consultations, test calls, test emails, observations, and audits.

A special feature of mystery research procedures is that these instruments are often used not only for measurement, but also for individual and continuous employee development. An appropriately equipped mystery shopping program generates a high level of motivation on various levels for employees in customer contact to reflect on and change their behavior.

The mere knowledge that mystery shopping is conducted on a regular basis prompts employees to adhere to the specified standards and to serve customers with a high level of customer orientation. Many employees want to do well when compared to internal or external peers and work to rank well in the benchmarking process by consistently performing above average.

Most employees recognize the benefit of a well-executed mystery shopping in the opportunity to receive sound feedback for their individual development. There is no more authentic situation for reflecting on one's own behavior than timely feedback on a real customer conversation.

Feedback testers are also increasingly used in the luxury segment. These are specially trained mystery shoppers who identify themselves as test shoppers after the test and give the salesperson individual feedback on the service quality experienced during the conversation. The feedback includes positive and negative aspects and is a valuable and highly valued opportunity for all employees in customer contact to objectively scrutinize their own behavior and change it if necessary.

Especially in the luxury segment, mystery shopping can be used to check aspects that cannot be collected in a customer survey. This applies, for example, to all internal standards that normal customers are not even aware of. Carefully trained mystery shoppers with a premium/luxury profile are trained on these standards and enabled to assess their fulfillment.

Another important aspect is to capture a holistic customer experience for specific sub-aspects of the customer journey. This can include, for example, the initiation phase, in which initial information is obtained with test calls (mystery calls) or test emails (mystery mails), product availability is requested, or appointments are made for a consultation. The next step is to evaluate the on-site visit. Here, aspects of the outlet (findability, parking situation, presentation of products, cleanliness, and order, etc.) as well as employee-related aspects (greeting, needs analysis, quality of advice, behavior, etc.) are checked. Follow-up can also be checked: testers wait to see if the salesperson generates a follow-up of the contact made and actively calls or writes to them to follow up.

Attracting and retaining customers with excellent sales consultants

The orientation of the projects when carrying out mystery shopping in the luxury sector can be very different. Basically, a variety of different orientations can be differentiated, which can be served either individually or in combination.

Projects for the development of employees: In terms of better customer centricity, more quality in customer contact, increase in customer satisfaction, conversion, and follow-up rate.

Projects to develop training needs or measure training success: The aim of these projects is to review and adapt training concepts, training content, and coaching measures. The clients for such projects in the area of training are usually the providers who want to use them to optimally align their central training activities.

Projects to review contractually agreed standards: The relationship between manufacturers and sales intermediaries is governed by extensive contracts in which hundreds of standards are agreed upon. Manufacturers use audits and mystery shopping to check the extent to which trading partners adhere to agreed standards.

Projects to develop quality in customer contact at international level: International projects are aimed in particular at optimizing sales processes in defined groups of countries or globally. Since there are market-specific peculiarities and conditions in each country, it is particularly important here to take central and market-specific aspects into account right from the conception stage. In addition to in-depth technical expertise, this also requires intercultural knowledge and a great deal of experience and tact in order to achieve a high level of acceptance for such a project in all markets.