What You Can Learn From Competitor Shops
Often, when thinking of mystery shopping services, businesses will think of face-to-face mystery shopping, but there is much more to this useful tool than many realise. These days, the best mystery shopping companies tend to offer a range of services, from telephone mystery shopping to market research, enabling them to provide businesses with an abundance of invaluable information that will go on to benefit their future success.
One particular service provided by mystery shopping companies that can be easy to dismiss but is actually incredibly advantageous is; competitor shops. This service does what it says on the tin and it involves a mystery shopper interacting with a competitor and feeding back to you. Businesses from all industry sectors can learn a lot from a competitor shop and if you’re wondering whether this is a service that’s worth using, keep reading today.
What your competitors are doing well
Whether a mystery shopper interacts with your competitors online, via the phone or face-to-face, they will be able to provide feedback about all of the things that they did well during this interaction. This competitor shop will give you a useful insight into why competitors are popular and why prospective customers might turn to them for the products/services they need.
Knowing more in this regard will enable you to re-evaluate your own customer journey and make some changes to ensure that you’re providing the best possible experience. You can take some of the positives from the interactions with your competitors and implement them to ensure that you’re not being beaten should prospective customers interact with you both. Of course, mystery shoppers can also inform you about what your competitors aren’t so great at too.
What sets you apart from the competition
The well rounded and honest feedback provided by a mystery shopper will help you to establish what makes your business unique. Having a USP is really important, no matter what size your business is, and it will help you to ensure that you’re not being overlooked by prospective customers who are assessing the whole market before deciding who to do business with.
Understanding what sets you apart and what you’re excelling at when compared to your competitors will enable you to use this to your advantage when you’re trying to win new business. Your USP is what differentiates you from your competition and it is something that you should be advertising to help prospective customers distinguish between you and the rest of the market, so being aware of what sets you apart is helpful for a number of reasons.
What you can do to be more competitive
Everything that you learn from competitor shops can help you to make changes to your business to ensure that you’re not getting left behind. Remaining competitive is essential if you want to be successful, especially in a saturated market, and without a competitive edge, it is likely that prospective customers will continually turn to your competitors.
Any feedback provided by a mystery shopper can be used to help you ensure that you’re standing out from the crowd and doing so is about more than just having competitive pricing nowadays. Both UX and CX is something that all businesses need to be aware of and providing a frictionless experience that makes customers feel like an individual is essential. By using competitor shops at various times you will be able to ensure you’re staying competitive too.
Working with a mystery shopping company
All in all, there is no denying that competitor shops can be incredibly useful and working with a mystery shopping company, even if you solely use this service, will definitely be worthwhile. You can learn so much from a mystery shopper interacting with your direct competitors and you can use the feedback that you receive to fuel the success of your business.
If you’re interested in competitor shops and you’d like to speak to a mystery shopping company about this specific service in more detail, don’t hesitate to contact our team at Proinsight today. Not only can we answer any questions you may have, but we can also provide you with the outstanding services that you’d like to try as well. We have many years of experience providing tailored mystery shopping programmes to businesses across all sectors, so you can trust that we are the best people to turn to in this regard. We look forward to hearing from you.
