Competitive Intelligence during COVID-19 Pandemic

Competitive Intelligence During COVID-19

David Lithwick

Best Practices Identified During COVID-19 Mystery Shopping: Canadian Tire: No delay in ordering / picking up merchandise What happened: L.L.Bean: Making it extremely easy to return clothing What happened: Worst Practices Identified During COVID-19 Mystery Shopping: No Frills: Lack of floor staff results in over-stressed cashiers reacting rudely to customers What happened: Staples: Contact centre not taking calls What happened:

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Don’t Confuse a Competitor Mystery Shop for a Traditional Mystery Shop

David Lithwick

Comparing a competitor mystery shop to a traditional mystery shop is like comparing apples to oranges. Although they may seem similar at a glance, the two are actually vastly different. The approaches for a competitor mystery shop versus a traditional mystery shop differ significantly in goal, shopper selection, sample size and analysis. Goal Competitor mystery shop: The goal of a competitor mystery shop is to gather insights on competitor initiatives and best practices (e.g. telecom wants to see what other incentives competitors are offering smartphone buyers besides those listed on their websites). Traditional mystery shop: The goal for a traditional mystery shop is to assess staff service and compliance performance… Read More

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Cross-Selling – Up-selling — Oh My!!

David Lithwick

A lot of energy in mystery shopping is spent on assessing sales delivery, but for potential customers only. Often, only very basic questions are asked…“Did the rep probe your needs?” or “Did they ask for your business?” or “Did they ask to follow up?” Big mistake!! TIP – If you are going to mystery shop front line staff sales delivery, assess their efforts to up-sell and cross-sell your current customers as well. After 30 years of doing mystery shops, I can say with 100% certainty that companies are not spending enough time assessing how well their sales and contact centre staff encourage current customers to increase monthly spending. Take banking…Mortgage… Read More

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