UCLan Students’ Union
UCLan Students’ Union has successfully extended the scope of the mystery shopping scheme this year by adding some detailed scenarios to each visit.
Not only was customer service measured during each visit but also awareness of promotions attached to the NUS extra card. The union conducts retail, bar event and bar dining visits.
“The NUS Services mystery shopping programme provides a great insight and tool for benchmarking customer care standards within bars, retail and catering outlets.
The depth of the reports enabled us to probe deeply in to staff awareness of promotions in our outlets attached to the NUS extra card, as well as enabling us to measure service and staff independently and objectively from a customer perspective.
The research is hugely valuable in developing customer service standards.” Nicci Procter, Marketing Manager, UCLan Students’ Union
University of Sussex Students’ Union
The University of Sussex Students' Union has participated in the mystery shopping programme since it began, and has increased the number of shops conducted year on year.
The value of the service is shown through the inclusion of a target score in union KPIs to ensure high-quality solutions to its members. The union conducts both retail and bar dining visits.
"The mystery shopping programme is a very effective method of measuring the quality of our customer service in our retail, bar and catering outlets.
The programme is very flexible, ensuring that the mystery shops address our needs perfectly.
The reports are incredibly detailed, allowing us to use them in our staff training programmes, highlighting both areas of shortfalls in customer service and areas of excellence. Recommended to any union!" John Houlihan, Assistant Director (Commercial and Central Services), University of Sussex Students' Union
University of Manchester Students’ Union
The University of Manchester Students' Union undertook a large programme of visits to a large number of different locations.
It uses the retail, bar dining, non-commercial services (receptions), non-commercial services (activities centres) and a bespoke report built especially for the Academy.
“We wanted to understand the level of service our customers were receiving in all our outlets, from the reception to the bars and shops and even the Academy.
The flexibility of NUS Services’ mystery shopping programme allowed us to build our own bespoke report for the Academy to ensure we were measuring exactly what we needed to. The reports are very detailed and well designed.
They indicate what we're doing well, and raise valid action points providing clear targets for improvements. As a result, we've worked hard on our customer service and seen many improvements wave on wave.
The attention to detail coupled with the advice from NUS Services proved invaluable in ensuring the successful completion of 3 waves of visits.
The research is hugely valuable to us in developing, monitoring and maintaining customer service standards across our outlets. It also allows us to benchmark our services against other students' unions that take part in the programme, which enables us to assess how we are performing compared to other operations around the country.” Paul Parkes, Business Development & Projects Manager, University of Manchester Students' Union