Bringing Retailing to the Fore!

Everyone has been in a restaurant or a retail outlet at one point of time and thought, “I wish I could tell the owner of this place how unhappy I am with my experience.” In other cases, an employee has gone the extra mile to offer their assistance and ensure that the customer gets the highest level of satisfaction.Mystery Shopping is the solution that many companies have taken to for truly understanding the reality of the customer experience of their brand.

Total Solutions Group, a leading player in Mystery Shopping began its journey in 1998 as the pioneer of Mystery Shopping in India and to become one of the largest and most dynamic providers of customer experience mapping solutions in India and the South-East Asian countries. TSG now has 32 offices pan-India with over 4,000+ certified and trained mystery shoppers. As the name states, Total Solutions Group (TSG) does not consider itself as a service provider, but as a solutions provider.

According to industry estimates, Mystery shopping is around Rs 835 crore business in India by annual revenue and growing at a yearly clip of 30-40 per cent. Total Solutions Group commands the numero uno position in the Industry over the past many years and has been growing at 60 per cent year-on- year. Mystery Auditing is a key business solution for F&B, hospitality, retail, automotive, luxury etc. The purpose of a ....Mystery Audit is to provide a true and unbiased account of the customer experience. Total Solutions Group has deployed Mystery Shopping programs with many leading Indian and international brands including Samsung, Vodafone, TATA Croma, CCD, Baskin Robbins, Toyota and Chili’s.

Mystery Shopping is vital to an organisation with effect to the following outputs:
A. Evaluating adherence to standard operating procedures
B. Identifying revenue leakage opportunities
C. Identifying whether the inventory/ VM planogram is in line with the company policy and that no unauthorised/outside products are available
D. Ensuring that employee integrity is of the highest level to reduce revenue leakage and self-cannibalisation in the company
E. Measuring and monitoring customer experience on a regular basis.

Total Solutions Group’s auditors are thoroughly trained and tested on the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) of the client as well as the Mystery Audit checklist. The auditors are geo-tagged to ensure that the auditor spends enough time in the outlet so as to gain complete insights on each item of the checklist. In order to maximise the effectiveness and efficiency of the audits, TSG has developed an application that is installed on the auditor’s mobile device. The application has the entire checklist where the auditor can fill in the report immediately after the audit as well as upload the media proofs. The completed report is then uploaded directly to TSG’s servers within a few hours. A full quality check is completed on the report by the Quality Check team, and within 48 hours of the audit, the client will have access to the report on their unique customised logins to TSG’s client portal. A full dashboard of analytics and trends analysis, training needs analysis, highlighted concern areas by location, and various other ad-hoc reports are available to the client on the dashboard. TSG also has an automated SMS trigger which goes to the relevant stakeholders in case a SOS or fatal issue has been identified during the audit for ex. revenue leakage instances, cannibalisation of the brand etc wherein the top management can take immediate action on the issues highlighted.

Sharing information on the same, Kapil Malhotra, MD & Founder, Total Solutions Group, said, “We have been providing Mystery Shopping services to our clients for the past 16 years. All the top eCommerce players, hypermarkets, electronic chains, F & B brands, jewellery brands, diagnostic labs, telecom brands, automotive brands, hotel chains, airlines, luxury retail and even grocery stores have taken to this solution.”

Enhancing customer experience
It’s no surprise that Mystery Shopping brings numerous benefits to its users including enhancing consumer experience, as when employees know that a mystery shopper can visit their store at any given time, they are more inclined to provide excellent customer service to every customer. In this case, a level of self-policing is established which also ensures the highest level of employee integrity. With the internal control observations in every report, the organisation can take appropriate steps to strengthen its employee pool and eradicate any vulnerability. This will ensure that there is no loss to the top line due to dishonesty or carelessness from the employees.

As per Malhotra, Total Solutions Group’s Mystery Shopping is a fact finding activity and not a fault finding activity which is structured in such a way so as to make it an enabler by empowering the entire work-force towards improved performance on the floor. Mystery Shopping also focuses on finding the key talent and best employees. The Mystery Shoppers are instructed to find positive insights as well as the negative concern areas. Malhotra states that the key to success for an organisation is how to structure the Mystery Shopping program wherein it positively impacts the company’s revenues through enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty and TSG has many case studies on bringing in incremental revenue through its proprietary mystery shopping process.

Aside from Mystery Shopping services, Total Solutions Group offers a full 360 degree set of business solutions, as highlighted below.
.Market Research and Intelligence
Audits (Mystery, Internal and Operations)
Franchise Development Program
Forensic & Integrity Audits
Customer Feedback Analysis
Voice of the Customer Program, Focus Group Discussions, Customer Comment Card Analysis
Spot Audits (Cash, Inventory & SOPs)
Web & App based training and feedback programs
Fixed Asset Management Solutions, Bar-Code, RFID and GPS
Retail Expansion Solutions
SOP Creation and Implementation
Customer Centricity Programs (Focus Groups, Voice of the Customer)
Employee Satisfaction Programs
SOP Based Employee Trainings
Regulatory & Compliance Aud
The entire exercise of Mystery Shopping focuses on the identification of the employees. Malhotra said, “TSG offers a performance-based report for employees that tend to make each employee push harder and give that extra effort, smile, or offer additional assistance so as to be incentivised and acknowledged. The team gets motivated and the customer receives the highest level of satisfaction.TSG also acknowledges highly effective employees by awarding them certificates of recognition and also gives an opportunity to the brand to receive a plaque of the best outlet in the Industry which they can proudly place at the entry of their respective store/s”

Exclusive interview:
Decoding Mystery Shopping
In a consumer-driven retail environment, when we confidently distinguish ourconsumers as the ‘King’, delivering a better retail experience holds crucial. Divulging details onthe same, Kapil Malhotra, MD & Founder of Total Solutions, speaks to Retailer, on how a Mystery Auditing programme is useful in enhancing brand experience.

What is the scope of Mystery Audit provided by Total Solutions in retail industry?
Most of our clients in the retail industry have their standard of rating procedures and training programme for their teams so that Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are implemented. Then to help retailers track whether their SOPs are relevant to today’s scenarios and whether information imparted during trainings are implemented properly or not, we have the Mystery Shopping programme.

Who is a Mystery Auditor and how does he/she perform Mystery Auditing?
The Mystery auditor is a decoy customer who rates his experience from entry to exit of a store. He follows check-list which is broken into various sections like ambience and hygiene of the retail outlet, product display, visual merchandising, knowledge of the retail executive and last, the billing experience. The auditor actually makes a purchase to capture the entire shopping experience.

What service or support is provided by Total Solutions to retailers in the process of business expansion?
Total Solutions Group has a USP programme, which is Location Feasibility Solution (LFS) under which a detailed analysis of area is provided, Customer taste, habits and preferences along with Competition Mapping that includes evaluating about the brands which are already located in the area, and last is the Voice of the Consumer program, where we make consumers become consultants. We help consumers and retailers to build a level of intricacy as well as a long-term relationship via our unique ‘Igniting Minds and Ideas’ program.

What are the new initiatives offered by Total Solutions for retailers?
One new initiative that TSG has developed is the iTRAINprogram to help retailers train their staff through newly developed mobile gaming app. Co-founder and Director, Ruchi Malhotra spearheads the strategy and innovation of Total Solutions Group and is the brain behind theiTRAINprogram, and she has designed the application to be an extremely effective and efficient training tool for employees. The benefits of the iTRAIN App Based Employee Training Program are that it is an ideal learning solution for programs such as Employee On-boarding Training, Continuous Compliance Training, Continuous Product Training, as well as Pre & Post Support for Soft Skills Training. The backend Content Management System allows for quick and easy upload of lessons and quiz content. It offers spaced repetition where the learner is exposed to the learning material at regular time intervals to reinforce learning and increase retention. It is based around bite-sized learning so the learning material is broken down into smaller pieces for easier absorption. iTRAIN offers retrieval learning/quizzes as studies have shown that retrieval learning increases recall and retention abilities.

A second new initiative that TSG has undertaken is capital funding for retail businesses. TSG helps businesses in a variety of different stages of maturity to grow their businesses and expand into new markets. We currently have tie-ups with the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Stock Exchange of Mauritius, Frankfurt Stock Exchange and Australia NSX.

A third new initiative is TSI’s EEE Igniting Minds and Ideas program. Igniting Minds and Ideas has provided valuable access to a large groupof direct consumers,along with relevant focus group discussions, interactions with the corporate team.