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Why mystery shopping is important for your spa business

Posted on by Philippa Abbott
11
Apr

Why mystery shopping is important for your spa business?

Mystery shopping within the Health and Beauty industry has a number of benefits. Conducting detailed mystery shopper research can help you to improve performance and profitability whilst ensuring a compliant service delivery, which your customers will love.

Every year thousands of companies pay mystery shoppers to go into their stores and conduct secret shops to help the company get better at what it does. Mystery shoppers give an unbiased customer response to their experience.

The information they provide to the company can then be used to help the company improve what it does in the future. In the spa industry we deal directly with customers or clients, and these mystery shoppers can help to give insight as to how to improve.

Customer satisfaction and experience
Many companies wonder what customers think when they walk into their spas and especially what they say when they leave. Mystery shopping gives a company an inside look into the customer experience and provides it with a way to gage customer satisfaction. This is extremely important when trying to find ways to innovate and grow a company’s customer base and profitability. Without the reports that mystery shoppers submit, companies would be missing out on important information about their business and they would have less of an idea as to how to improve.

Audit of company’s employees
Another important role that mystery shopping provides is insight into how employees are interacting with customers. It can be difficult to know how employees conduct themselves when a manager or supervisor is not around. We also have to consider what happens when our therapists go into the treatment room – it is vital that we know what is happening in the confines of the room that cannot be seen by anyone else and ensure that nothing untoward is happening. We have to be sure that treatment protocols are being adhered to as well to be sure that they client is getting the best results from the treatment.

Mystery shoppers are tasked with interacting with specific employees and providing the company with the names of the people they interacted with. This helps to ensure that all of a spa’s employees are conducting themselves in the right way and giving the customer the best experience possible.

Future employees and training 
In addition to gaining information about current employees, mystery shopping can give a company insight as to what it should look for in future employees. The information received can also help companies improve their training processes by identifying areas where employees lacked skills or competencies.

Who can help you with this?

Spa Sense can… http://www.spasense.co.za/2016/04/spa-sense-offers-spa-assessment

 

Reference:

http://www.bestmark.com/news/Shoppers/articles/Why_mystery_shopping_is_important_for_business/40067473.aspx

 

Philippa Abbott

I qualified as a Somatologist in JHB in 2001. I began my career in the spa industry working on cruise ships for Steiner Transocean. I furthered my studies on my return to SA qualifying in advanced make up and special effects. I then moved to London where I worked in 2 of the most prestigious spas. I acquired knowledge in all aspects if the spa business and moved quickly from hands on therapy to part of the management team. When I finally came back to South Africa to settle for good I joined the management team of the Spas of Distinction where I grew my skill set even further and established a professional network throughout the South African Spa Industry. It is here where my roots are now deep seated and where I will remain for good. I started Spa Sense in 2010 and we have grown from strength to strength every year since then; forming key relationships with all the industry specialists. I head up the consultancy division of Spa Sense and run many of our training courses including Front Office, SOPs and Spa Sales and Retail. I also oversee our recruitment division making sure that all my clients and candidates expectations are always exceeded by the level service they receive from my team. I am incredibly passionate about what I do and hope I remain blessed enough to be in this exciting industry forever. This blog is a place I can share my views and experience so I hope you enjoy the articles and find them useful enough to use in your business.