Mystery shopping research to assess the effectiveness of a technical helpline service
The Concrete Centre (TCC) is the central development organisation for the UK concrete industry. As part of a strategic review the senior management team wanted to assess the effectiveness of its helpline service. In particular, they wanted to identify the areas of strength and to determine where there was the potential for developments to be made.
They asked Leading Edge to undertake a ‘mystery shopping’ exercise to assess the helpline’s performance against 13 criteria defined in the project brief. We started by developing 48 questions covering all of the core service areas ranging from event and meeting requests through to handling in-depth technical queries on concrete. The questions were also geared towards the organisation’s key target groups, such as consulting engineers and contractors.
Over a five week period we successfully contacted the helpline via phone, e-mail and webform to allow assessments to be made across the different communication channels. All the telephone calls were recorded using specialist software which allowed us to fully review each contact made.
By developing a scoring system to judge each contact against the 13 performance criteria, it enabled us to deliver a series of tangible data sets for comparison. For example, our report clearly identified that the helpline is seen by users as delivering a very good level of service in the core areas, but there was potential for change in the administration of enquiries.
From reviewing the data we were able to provide a number of tactical recommendations. TCC used the results of the survey to guide their strategic decisions on how best to offer technical support.