Does your service standard work when no one is watching?
- Segment
- Public-facing service network
- Topic
- Customer experience and service standards
- Method
- More than 100 mystery shopping evaluations, in person and through digital channels
100+ evaluations
in person and digital
The starting point
An organization with a broad regional footprint served the public through a network of service locations. Its commitment was to deliver the same quality, whatever the location or channel.
Every stage of contact had a defined standard. On paper, the model was ready.
What nobody knew yet was what happened when an ordinary person showed up to be served.
- Welcome
- Explore the need
- Advise
- Wrap up
Observe, don’t ask
Ask staff how service should work, and you find out what they know. Not what they do.
That’s why the project used mystery shopping. Across more than 100 evaluations, trained shoppers approached the service locations like ordinary customers and recorded how they were welcomed, advised and referred.
From first contact to goodbye
The evaluation followed every stage of service:
| No. | Moment and what is observed |
|---|---|
| 1 | The welcome: courtesy, attention and the demeanor of whoever greets the customer. |
| 2 | Understanding: did staff try to find out what the person needed before giving advice? |
| 3 | The solution: were the alternatives clear, and was there a defined path forward? |
| 4 | The goodbye: did the interaction end with a recap and a way to stay in touch?the most overlooked |
Courtesy is only the first of these moments. Friendly service that doesn’t understand the customer, or that ends with no next step, looks right but falls short. The goodbye, in particular, tends to be the most overlooked moment, and it’s the one that decides whether a person comes back.
Service starts before the door
Before reaching a location, people look for information online, call, send a message or find the organization on social media. So the evaluation covered those channels too, including response times and how current the published information was.
Even the physical space was evaluated. Finding the right address, recognizing the brand and arriving at a well-kept space are all part of the experience. To a customer, everything sends a message.
- Online search
- Phone calls
- Messaging
- Social media
- Response time
- Published information
- Environment
- Door
A problem at one location, or a problem with the standard?
Each visit produced its own evaluation. The real value, though, came from looking at them all together.
The evaluations were consolidated to compare stages of service, regions and types of service center. Unmet criteria were mapped to show where failures kept recurring.
That view makes a crucial distinction. A failure at one location is that location’s problem. The same failure at many locations points to a problem with the standard itself, or with how it was taught.
| P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 | P5 | P6 | P7 | P8 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Item 1 | ✕ | |||||||
| Item 2 | ||||||||
| Item 3 | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ||
| Item 4 |
What changed for the customer
Separating one-off failures from network-wide ones led to three lines of action:
- NetworkRevising the service standard wherever failures recurred across the network.
- TrainingChanging the training, so the revised standard actually reached frontline staff.
- LocationTargeted action at specific service centers where problems were local.
Writing a service standard is the easy part. To find out whether it reaches the customer, sometimes you have to show up like any other customer and knock on the door.