The term “compliance” gets a raw deal. Immediately the term suggests rules, regulations, inspections, audits and negatives outcomes for those that drift outside of the rules. We tend to think of sectors like the financial services industry or maybe areas where there is a degree of risk such as health and safety. Seldom do we think to compare compliance audits with customer satisfaction.
With correctly thought out sales and service guidelines, compliant practice can improve customer satisfaction
Good standards of compliance can lead to happy customers. Data gathered from 700 responses in a recent mystery shopping survey (conducted for a major UK retailer) found that the NPS score could be directly correlated with compliant selling practices. Source: Tern Mystery Shopping Data 2016, based on 700 responses.
Measuring against company standards
As a mystery shopping company, Tern understands the importance of compliance in the daily work of employees and how they go about adhering to those standards. Whether those standards are laid out in an employee code of conduct booklet, brand guideline pack or even a company manual, the benefits can be clear to see.
There are a number of key areas which business managers can demonstrably link to consistency and performance. In this regard, compliance is used to help companies not just for legal and regulatory reasons, it can also be used to delight customers and drive revenue.
How compliance audits can help your business
1.) Quality standards can be directly related to the customer experience.
2.) Standards can be made objective and measurable and cover a number of key areas.
3.) Training of brand/retail standards can be embedded within compliance reporting frameworks.
4.) Business owners can review compliance audits and can then correlate it to store, location or regional performance.
Compliance reviews and return on investment
The main function of any mystery shopping lead compliance audit campaign is to find areas which lack consistency. So whether you use video based evidence or written reporting as your feedback mechanism, providing a consistent and high quality service should lead to a good customer experience. It will also increase the likelihood that your product or brand will be recommended to others. Everybody in business understands the power of customer referrals revenue, so we can easily align ourselves to this through measurement methods such as the NPS Score.
Don’t underestimate the power of compliant service delivery to create referrals and loyalty from your customers. If you manage this well, your satisfied brand advocates will follow.
Other pages you may find of interest in relation to this article: