Mystery shopping has traditionally been viewed as a B2C instrument for measuring customer service levels. However, this service is also invaluable in the B2B industry. In this industry, the stakes are higher: It’s hard to lose customers, but when those customers are large corporations, the impact of such a loss is more significant.

In the B2C sector, consumer purchases are driven by price coupled with good customer service. However, in the B2B sector, the relationship between company and supplier plays a more important role than mere price. For that reason, it is important to measure service levels and objectively assess service levels within a company.

Many companies wonder exactly how B2B mystery shopping works. It simply works the same way mystery shopping is more traditionally thought of, with the only exception that customers, or mystery shoppers, will pose as businesses calling inquiring about their services and products.

The benefits of B2B mystery shopping

With B2B Mystery Shopping, you can evaluate the following aspects of your business:

1. General levels of customer service and product compliance

By setting up dummy accounts or company profiles, trained mystery shoppers can contact your company via phone or email with questions about your products/services. You’ll gain a better understanding of how your leads are treated, what information is shared with leads, and what follow-up, if any, is completed to get a new customer.

In addition, fictitious accounts and company profiles can be created to evaluate the ordering and purchasing process. From here, you can see if your employees are attempting to upsell or cross-sell, offer additional products or services that are important to your customers, and the overall levels of service provided.

2. Brand presence

Through mystery shopping, you will determine how your brand is presented to other businesses. This is important to earn customer loyalty and longevity. Studies have shown that a strong brand will encourage customers to be loyal to the product, they will be less likely to search for competing brands, and they will not oppose price increases.

3.Online Interactions/Email Inquiries

With the change in online technology, more and more companies will search for information through email inquiries instead of picking up a phone. Quick response time can make or break a potential sales opportunity.

4. Sales training and development.

It is vital that the sales team present information clearly and attractively, build rapport with potential customers, and make sales calls in a way that leads to sales. If sales are not where they are expected to be, it is difficult to determine if it is due to a lack of sales development within the company or if there is a flaw in the sales techniques used. Mystery shopping programs can provide companies with a schedule that will help them determine what areas are missing, make improvements, and even determine if sales training needs to be modified.

Examples of B2B Mystery Shopping

Below are two examples of companies that have used mystery shopping in the B2B sector to measure and improve service levels.

1. A supplier of office supplies and supplies wanted to determine how special requests were fulfilled and what options were provided to companies that contacted them. In addition, they wanted to find out if upsells and cross-sells were initiated during the order process and what, if any, promotional materials were included in the customer’s packaging.

The program used mystery shoppers who were small business owners in an industry that would need such supplies in a resale capacity. Using their business information, they contacted customer locations to place a specific order with special requirements. They evaluated the order placement process, tracked delivery time, and then reported how the order was packaged, what promotional material was included with the order. Photographs were taken and uploaded to the survey.

2. A plastics and materials testing lab conducted benchmark assessments to determine speed of email responses, knowledge of testing and lab capabilities, and follow-up attempts with potential customers. In addition, they wanted to see first-hand how email inquiries were routed within the company, at what point in the routing system did emails “fall through the cracks” when emails were not responded to.

Mystery shoppers were trained and educated on the company’s laboratory testing capabilities and the industries they serve. Each mystery shopper was assigned a fictitious company name and a position within the company. They were directed to contact an assigned location via email inquiring about test specifications and what information was required to perform certain tests.

Mystery shoppers tracked time to respond to email inquiries. In addition, knowledge of testing capabilities and referral sources was assessed, and mystery shoppers documented whether or not the associate attempted to follow up on the initial inquiry or actual follow-up attempts were made within 2 business days. at the initial consultation.

Conclusion

While the planning stages for starting a B2B program are more detailed in nature, the program can be run simply and easily once started. With this type of mystery shopping, the customer plays a crucial role in developing scenarios as well as implementing fictitious company names/accounts. Depending on the nature of the industry, this may require the creation of accounts in the company system that are surreptitiously marked to indicate that they are not genuine accounts. In other cases, it may just require businesses to help the mystery shopping provider determine what types of businesses mystery shoppers should represent in order to engage with staff in an authentic and relevant way. These programs have proven to be very successful and while this has been an often overlooked service in this industry, there is a growing trend of B2B companies turning to shadow shopping to gauge their overall service levels. .