The Science of Customer Feedback

Should your mystery shopping program include rewards for good scores? Everyone responds to rewards – right? But is there actual proof that rewards actually work?

We would do well to turn to a recognised authority for an answer.

“Ultimate Rewards,” published by Harvard University Press is one such authority. In the Table of Contents we see the name of the famous management consultant Peter Drucker who penned one of the chapters. “Harvard” and “Drucker” provide reputation add credibility.

So what do the authors in this anthology actually say?

Some authors dismiss the notion that rewards are effective. Chapter titles like , “Asinine Attitude Toward Motivation”, “Why Incentive Plans can Never Work” and “Rethinking Rewards” transmit the opinion of the author even before we get into the substance of their argument.

Other authors assert that rewards work well and cite evidence to prove it, but they are critical of organisations that misuse or mismanage their rewards. These authors say that “rewards failure” is assured if organisations reward wrong things. They cite rewarding “tasks” and “behaviours” as wrong. Rewards for simply doing stuff doesn’t cut it. On the other hand success is more certain if organisations focus on objectives rather than tasks and on results rather than behaviours.

So where does this leave mystery shopping and rewards?

Mystery shopping measures such things as, “following up a sales lead” and “suggestive selling.” Following up a lead is a task and it’s a behaviour. Suggestive selling is a task and a behaviour. And that’s the problem. Mystery shopping is largely about tasks and behaviours.

The inescapable conclusion is that if we reward high scores or punish low mystery shopping scores we misuse and mismanage the very tool that can help us achieve the results we want.

Mystery shopping is a great servant, but a poor master. Make sure that it serves you well by rewarding results rather than scores.

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