How to effectively improve the quality of service and improve customer satisfaction, CEOs and marketing elites from all walks of life have created new ones, and the Eight Immortals have crossed the sea. Among them, the “mysterious customer†method of hiring general consumers to receive services or actual consumption and then score or evaluate secretly is regarded as a “first-class trade secret†by the executives, and there is little publicity outside. KFC has more than 60 countries and more than 9900 chain stores. However, if KFC is outside the United States, how can one believe that its branches can be “conformistâ€? On one occasion, Shanghai KFC received three appraisals from international companies. They rated the quality of their work at the Bund Fast Food Restaurant in three separate evaluations, which were 83, 85, and 88 points respectively. The company’s Chinese and foreign managers are stunned. How are these three scores assessed? It turned out that KFC hired and trained a group of people to let them pretend to be customers and secretly sneaked into the store to check scores. These “mysterious customers†came to the end without a trace, and they did not have time laws. This made the managers and employees of the fast-food restaurant feel a certain pressure from time to time and did not dare to slacken their efforts. The “mysterious customer†approach was first introduced by KFC, Rogers, Nokia, Motorola, Philips and other international multinational companies to manage the services of their domestic chain divisions. Today, apparel brands have begun to use "mysterious customers", and Beijing Karma is the beneficiary of this approach. As a brand that does not have a long history, Kama did not have large-scale advertising campaigns, no celebrity endorsements, and even did not participate in professional exhibitions all over the country during the growth period. However, this did not affect the peer’s attention to its growth rate. It also makes peers eager to understand its secrets of success. On one occasion, when Mr. Wang, a brand consultant of Kama, did training for other clothing brands, a certain brand manager said to him very straightforward: “You just tell me what Kama is doing.†In Beijing SOHO Modern City's Kama original clothing and apparel Co., Ltd., the reporter saw Karma's trader - executive director Zhao Bo. In his view, the effective management of terminal stores, and the emphasis on store services, and customer satisfaction as the basis for the survival of enterprises are the core of Kama's success. At present, the Karma brand has a total of more than 300 stores in the country, of which 60% are direct sales stores. Compared with casual wear brands such as Chun, Senma, and Benny, Karma has a small number of shops. "We do not focus on quantity, but quality." Zhao Bo said. In 2005, Kama began to introduce "mysterious customers" in the terminal stores. Zhao Bo said: "We want to experience the shop's service from the customer's point of view, and listen to the customer's feelings and suggestions about the brand. Mystery customer's way can best reflect the normal level of shop service because the staff do not know who is the mysterious person and who is ordinary. The customer, in this state, the clerk can best show the true level of daily service, rather than prepare in advance to meet the supervisor's inspection. However, when Kama had just implemented this method, he was opposed by franchisees. "The franchisee thinks that opening a store can only make money, but after the communication, they can basically respond." The main point of Zhao Bo's communication with franchisees is to tell franchisees that customer satisfaction can bring continuous business. “Branding and building a reputation are both long-term and common interests. Customers don’t care whether they are franchises or directly-operated stores. They only recognize the Kama brand, so we must establish a unified standard. This is also the basis for doing chain stores.†Zhao Bo Say. At present, Karma conducts four mysterious customer surveys a year. The survey includes the first impressions of customers on the store and shopping guide to each step and step of leaving the store, including how to greet the guide, how to say goodbye to the customer, and so on. The shops that Kama surveyed each time are randomly selected, and 20% of the stores are selected each time. Therefore, each regional manager will not be lucky. For the “mysterious customerâ€, Kama’s annual investment is about 200,000 yuan. For the mystery customer's assessment results, Karma will use this to assess the performance of regional managers and determine their bonuses and promotion opportunities. For those underperforming stores, Karma did not punitive measures, but through a meeting with the manager and the regional manager to explore ways to improve the operation of the store. Zhao Bo believes that the mystery customer's role in Karma is mainly in two aspects: "The first is to promote services, so that each colleague is aware of the importance of customer satisfaction, so as to continuously improve the service level and allow the shop to form The second is monitoring. With the increase in the number of stores, the geographical area is becoming wider and wider. Without this method, it will be difficult to provide feedback on the actual service level of the stores and it is easy to get out of control." In many retail companies that implement the mystery customer system, they generally believe that the biggest difficulty is the scale of mystery customer ratings. "Need to constantly reach a consensus and require them to have a description of behavior while scoring, so that we can track it," Zhao Bo said. The main method to solve this difficulty is to choose a professional third-party company. Zhao Bo suggested that companies should carefully select third-party companies and establish a set of restraint systems. Random recruitment like that without any training is unprofessional. Glossary “Mystery Customer†(Mystery Customer) is a kind of business investigation method in which a rigorously trained investigator acts as a customer within a specified or specified time and evaluates or evaluates a series of questions designed in advance. Since the identity of the “mysterious customer†cannot be identified or confirmed in advance due to the subject being inspected or needs to be assessed, the investigation method can truly and accurately reflect the actual problems that exist objectively. Mystery shopper detection first appeared in the banking and retail industries in the United States to prevent employee theft; in the 1940s, the term “Mystery Shopping†(mystery shopping/mystery shopper detection) officially appeared, and began to use this method to evaluate customer service; In the 1970s and 1980s, Shop'nChek popularized the detection of mystery customers and opened up a broad space for development. In the 1990s, thanks to the development of the Internet, the mysterious customer inspection industry experienced unprecedented rapid growth. And gained public recognition. 
How to effectively improve the quality of service and improve customer satisfaction, CEOs and marketing elites from all walks of life have created new ones, and the Eight Immortals have crossed the sea. Among them, the “mysterious customer†method of hiring general consumers to receive services or actual consumption and then score or evaluate secretly is regarded as a “first-class trade secret†by the executives, and there is little publicity outside.