Does your service standard work when no one is watching?
- Segment
- Small business support and development
- Topic
- Service quality and standardization
- Method
- More than 100 mystery shopping evaluations, in person and through digital channels
100+ evaluations
in person and digital
The starting point
An organization that supports small businesses served entrepreneurs through a large network of local service centers, run in partnership with various other organizations. Its promise was ambitious: the same quality of service, whatever location or channel an entrepreneur chose.
Each step had a defined standard: welcoming the client, understanding their needs, presenting solutions and seeing the interaction through to the end. On paper, the model was ready.
The question still unanswered was a different one: what actually happened when a real entrepreneur walked through the door?
- Welcome
- Understand the need
- Present solutions
- See it through
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. More than 100 evaluators visited the service centers posing as entrepreneurs with real needs, and recorded how they were greeted, advised and referred.
The four moments of service
The evaluation followed each interaction from start to finish:
| No. | Moment and what is observed |
|---|---|
| 1 | The welcome: courtesy, availability and professionalism. |
| 2 | Understanding: did the staff member ask questions, grasp the entrepreneur’s situation and tailor the advice? |
| 3 | The solution: were the options explained clearly, and did the entrepreneur leave knowing what to do next? |
| 4 | The close: was there a recap, room for more questions and some way to stay in touch?the most often forgotten |
Courtesy is only the first of these moments. Friendly service that doesn’t understand the customer, or that ends without a next step, gets the form right and misses the point. The close, in particular, tends to be the most neglected moment, and it’s where entrepreneurs decide whether to come back.
Service starts before the door
Before visiting a service center, entrepreneurs search online, call, send messages or look the organization up on social media. So the evaluation covered those channels too: phone, WhatsApp, social media, response times and whether online information was up to date.
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.
- Internet
- Phone
- Social media
- Response time
- Online information
- Physical space
- 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.