Mystery Shoppers

Featured Article April '09

Vouching for your Marketing

In a tough trading climate many restaurants are turning to promotional offers and vouchers to get customers sat at their tables.

The success, or otherwise, of promotional vouchers is relatively easy to measure: count how many come back through the tills. What is more difficult to quantify is the actual experience of consumers.

Are the vouchers easy to use and easy to find? Are staff prepared for them and do they know the details? With an already heavily discounted sale up-selling is even more important, but is it happening?

One way of measuring these things is to combine standard mystery dining in a restaurant with the use of a voucher. Diners are asked to get one from the company’s website and then use it in a nearby venue. In that way they provide company marketeers with an understanding of how efficient the vouchers are, from a customer’s perspective, while Operations Directors would receive valuable information about individual branches.

To use mystery dining to measure the efficacy of marketing as well as service standards of a specific location would change its operations.

Rather than long-term programmes of mystery diners, there would be short intensive ones that fit in with monthly deals. Reports would be turned around quickly so that staff can be trained about ongoing promotions; aspects of those promotions could even be changed in response to mystery diners’ reports.

As restaurants use these promotional vouchers more and more, a shop-floor understanding of how they work will provide crucial information for both marketing and operations directors when designing future promotions.

 

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