Mary Portas’s Secret Shopper puts mystery shopping in the spotlight
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TV retail expert Mary Portas’s website has attracted hundreds of reviews from shoppers all around the country, but are the results overshadowed by Portas’s growing celebrity?
“I’m waging war on poor service in Great Britain, and your reports from the frontline are essential in delivering feedback straight to brands,” the juggernaut that is Mary Portas announces on her Secret Shopper website.
Portas has taken social media engagement and brought it into her own branded platform to let disgruntled consumers rant about, or praise, the customer service and retail environment delivered by the brands on the UK high street.
Hundreds of votes and comments have been cast, and a league table of 105 brands is available on her website.
To Portas’s credit, the list is clear in stipulating how many votes have been cast, and gives a rating from scores averaged across votes.
At first glance, the list looks very valuable, and there are a few surprises in this list, with perhaps unlikely brands such as Peacocks, Staples UK and Farmfoods all making the top 20 list.
I’m not sure what Portas plans to do with her list but her celebrity power is escalating so her league table could become a benchmark for high street service
Budget supermarket Iceland comes in at 6th, with an array of glowing comments, such as this one from a shopper in Newport, South Wales: “The checkout girls are always happy and chatty and also pack your bags, which is very helpful. There is always plenty of staff on the shop floor which are more than happy to show you to products and deal with queries.”
For those brands that score well, it is great PR material, and the vast amount of comments mean Portas’s website is an easily accessible reference for brands to gauge their feedback.
But for those who fall into the unenviable bottom 15, should the power of Portas have them shaking in their boots? I’m a regular shopper at Tesco and Zara, who are ranked 98 and 99 respectively. I personally find Zara to be good value, and when I lost a bangle in an Oxford Street branch, the security guard kept it for me in case I returned.
While there are lots of one star ratings from ruffled Zara shoppers who have commented that stores are crowded with long queues, there are also a significant amount of positive comments noting Zara’s value for money and positioning on the high street.
The same goes for Tesco, where I feel a strange of sense of achievement when I come in waving the vouchers that I have earned from my Clubcard, despite it scoring so low on Portas’s list.
While the negative comments on Portas’s list does give brands food for thought, the fact that it is an open rant from anyone, without taking into account any consistency factors, such as the type of outlet, brand category, or number of visits can mislead the public.
I’m not sure what Portas plans to do with her list but her celebrity power is escalating so her league table could become a benchmark for high street service, and could become the Trip Advisor of the retail world.
Considering this, brands are better off collaborating with Portas than resisting her, but they should be aware of the problems brands in the travel industry are having with the likes of Trip Advisor where bias is not always easy to strip out.
Consumers place a lot of trust in Trip Advisor, and it looks like Portas could be heading in the same direction. While some brands might be unfairly represented in her league table, on the bright side, it puts service back in the spotlight.
Readers' comments (4)
UMESH SAMANI | Thu, 10 Feb 2011 3:38 pm
The show certainly puts emphasis on customer services or ‘poor’ customer services, we’ve all had the bad service and told everyone but most of us don’t shout loud enough when we do get good service because we expect it. The league table is very worrying especially when down towards the bottom, it can destroy a business and some how the top players think they are doing it right, although it might only be a small sample of viewers voicing their opinions.
The main thing with it, it does make every person in the service industry step back and look at their business and how they are viewed by the customers. (Hopefully ) and make changes to suit.
Umesh Samani
Specialist Cars Stoke
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Claire | Fri, 11 Feb 2011 4:29 pm
I think you've answered your own point - shoppers might well appreciate Zara's good value clothes and Tesco's club card points, but what Mary Portas is focusing on with this exercise is customer service. If shops end up at the bottom of the list, its their service they need to look at - full stop. Not their position on the high street or pricing strategy. As she's said in the programme, these stores are making HUGE profits, but not re-investing them in staff training and human resources.
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Jeremy Michael, managing director, SMG UK | Mon, 14 Feb 2011 3:01 pm
The method of ‘secret shopping’ is neither credible nor realistic. How can the views of one or two people per store (per month), who are not even real customers, be used to drive business improvements or behavioural change?
Many forward-thinking retailers and service providers (including Burger King, Pets at Home and Superdrug to name a few) have chosen to move to a system of asking genuine customers to provide feedback on their in-store experience on a daily basis. This, in turn enables tangible improvement, as the data tells the retailer exactly which areas to focus on to increase customer loyalty, with customer service commonly being a key driver. As all results are tied back to the financial performance data, retailers can be sure that the information provided can be used for tangible business improvement.
Although the latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index results reveal that the overall satisfaction levels have increased slightly from July 2010 to 76.7, consumer confidence has fallen as a result of economic fears, spending cuts and growing financial pressures. Arguably, in such a competitive marketplace, it is more important to understand the customer experience in order for retailers to survive and reward its loyal customers. However, there are alternative methods that can capture continuous customer insight, provide real feedback from real customers about real issues in real time – unlike a one-off visit by a paid shopper. This demonstrates that secret shopping is no longer the most valuable and available tool for understanding the customer and that retailers and the leisure sector should be aware of the potential pitfalls.
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Anonymous | Wed, 9 Mar 2011 1:58 pm
I am the customer adviser who has given poor service to the secret shopper .
this is her interpretation ,everyone who knows me knows that i never give poor services .but i didnt tick the boxes on her sheet so ive given poor service.
I am waiting to here from my employers when my disapliary hearing will be. After working for 12 years for this company and never having a complaint only apraseials and never having any kind of warning, i am devasted
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