Few things are more motivating for employees than being publicly recognized and rewarded for a job well done. Employee rewards are one of the most effective and efficient ways to quickly generate positive changes in employee behavior that customers will be sure to notice.

Incentive mystery shops reward employees on the spot for excellent performance. When employees know there is a chance they can win prizes for demonstrating goal behaviors, employee engagement and customer service go up across the board. Consider an employee hoping to be evaluated by a mystery shopper in order to show off his or her selling skills. That employee might spend all week wowing customers in the hopes that one will be the mystery shopper. Sure enough, the 100th customer ends up being the mystery shopper and the employee is immediately rewarded with a $25 gift card for mentioning your new promotion or suggestive selling a high-margin item. The employee is happy because of the public recognition and for receiving a modest prize. But the real value is that the employee has now established the habit of consistently exhibiting stellar selling behaviors while providing every customer with excellent service.

The power of intermittent reinforcement to shape behavior is evident all around us. Children craving attention, fishermen waiting for the “big one,” and gamblers at slot machines all perform behaviors hoping that the next time will produce the reward. The same principle applies to a reward/incentive shop program, and the fact that “the house always wins” is a great deal when your “house” includes employees, customers, and shareholders!

The BestMark Advantage – Rewards & Incentive Shops

Many of the benefits of our regular mystery shop program also apply to incentive shops:

• Strong Predictive Indicator. When aligned properly with other measurement and management tools, reward shop results can reliably predict customer satisfaction and future sales. A reward and incentive program managed by BestMark will help your company focus and improve on the specific behaviors that will create customer delight and positively impact sales and profitability.
• Vast geographical coverage. We have mystery shoppers in the locations you want shopped. BestMark performs tens of thousands of shops each month with shoppers in over 10,000 cities and towns across the US, Canada and Europe.
• Top quality with 100% completion rate. Many mystery shopping companies claim a completion rate of 100%, but at BestMark, we never break our promises. Our promised completion rate is 100% - no exceptions, no excuses. On top of that, the quality and accuracy of our shop results are the best in the industry. (See the details around our Quality Assurance Processes)
• Extensive shopper training. Before our mystery shoppers visit your locations or call your employees posing as customers, they will be trained, tested and certified on your specific program. Our shoppers will know exactly what to look and listen for, and we will ensure that all of your employees/locations are evaluated objectively, consistently, and accurately.
• Direct one-on-one management of shoppers. BestMark never uses sub-contractors. Our dedicated staff of in-house schedulers and editors speak one-on-one with our shoppers every day; this ensures that the shoppers fully understand specific requirements and receive continual coaching and recognition to better produce actionable feedback for you
• Highly engaged, top-performing shoppers. We understand that our shoppers are also our clients and our most important commodity. Our mystery shoppers feel like they are a part of our company. Through consistent direct contact, we instill in them a high level of personal accountability and pride that their feedback is important.
• Licensed in Nevada. BestMark is one of only a handful of mystery shopping companies who is licensed to perform shops in the state of Nevada where a Private Investigator’s license is required in order to conduct mystery shopping. Currently, there are a large number of companies operating in violation of the Nevada state laws. Not only does this put these companies at risk for significant fines and sanctions, but also puts their clients’ companies at risk for these same penalties.

A BestMark Reward and Incentive program enables our clients to:

• Keep goal behaviors visible and top of mind for all employees
• Align company-wide focus on performing goal behaviors and improving the customer experience
• Discover if customers are receiving consistently superior customer service at every location and/or customer touchpoint
• Identify gaps in training needs
• Improve suggestive selling and increase sales
• Ensure compliance with legal requirements to maintain a positive brand image and avoid legal issues
• And much, much more…

No matter what your reward or incentive objectives, we will partner with you to develop a program that will provide actionable results using state-of-the-art technologies and proven shop methodologies.

Actionable Insight

Collecting and aligning data only provides value if that information is actually used to improve performance, and it is critical that the data is useful at the operator level. With that in mind, BestMark created GuestLink™, a proprietary web-based reporting system that allows clients to create, update and track data at all levels within the organization for performance feedback and coaching. BestMark clients are also able to dynamically create ad hoc reports on the fly and update customized "Action Plans." When managers of customer-facing employees directly access shop results via GuestLink™, coaching and recognition (as well as solutions selling reinforcement) can occur at the front lines almost immediately.