A new scheme makes mystery shopper insights affordable to more pubs. Phil Mellows finds out more.
There are pluses and minuses for independent licensees competing in the pub marketplace. Unconstrained by the rules of a managed house chain they have the potential to be more responsive to local demand and to target the kind of customers they want to attract more closely.
On the other hand, profit margins are tighter and they don't usually have the kind of resources available to managed pubs that can help them to sharpen up their marketing.
Most managed groups, for instance, will have access to a mystery shopper scheme that can identify the strengths and weaknesses in the operation from pub to pub, building on what they do well and dealing with problems. It can also be used to incentivise staff and even produce league tables based on managers' performance.
Mystery visits bring valuable information - for one thing customers tend not to like to complain, and they are an embarrassment-free way of spotting problems before they start hitting sales.
Objective survey
But it's the kind of service only managed chains can afford. It just isn't economical to have a scheme for a single pub - up until now, that is.
A new mystery shopper agency has been set up that claims to have found a way to bring the benefits of an objective survey of how their business is performing from the customer's point of view to even the smallest pub or restaurant.
The key to it is a database of more than 6,700 ordinary pub-goers who, unlike the mystery shoppers employed by existing big agencies, are unpaid, doing the job for a free meal and a drink.
The idea was inspired by a former JD Wetherspoon manager who complained that he could always tell who the professional mystery shoppers were.
"We realised that there are members of the public out there who would be happy to spend 20 minutes filling in a form if they could go to the pub and get their expenses paid," explains Kevin Davies, managing director of the agency, Market Public. "They also have the advantage of being ordinary people."
The low cost of the scheme means, too, that a mystery visit can be tailored to an individual pub's needs. Not only can the time and the day be specified, but the mystery customer can also be chosen according to age and social status or other factor. You may, for instance, want an older customer to sample your menu or a disabled person to check your access.
Market Public has been surprisingly successful in recruiting a broad cross-section of people all over the country for the job since it set up its website in October 2003. "We were worried that we would only attract students but a lot of our members are over 35 and we have some in their 70s," says Kevin. "For each visit we've made so far there have been 100 people willing to do it."
The agency works as a kind of club with members receiving a newsletter full of hints and tips on conducting their mystery visit and the kind of things to look out for.
When a visit comes up in their area they are contacted by email or text.
As well as choosing a relevant profile for their visitor, licensees have a chance to add to or change the standard questionnaire, which covers the usual customer service and standards.
"Pubs can suit their own requirements," says Kevin. "For example, they can weight the questions to put more emphasis on food and can even specify the order to find out whether a new addition to menu is working, perhaps."
Visitors can be asked to score each element on a scale, to enable a pub to track its performance over time, or can be asked to comment for a more qualitative survey. Publicans also have to decide how much they want the customer to spend on their visit. This is added to the administration cost billed by Market Public.
Managed online
Everything is managed online. Reports are posted on the website for licensees to download, weaknesses can be highlighted, the results can be compared to those of similar pubs or tracked to help identify trends.
"We recommend monthly visits but we will also do spot checks, perhaps when the manager is taking a day off," says Kevin.
"Word-of-mouth quickly spreads about good and bad pubs and restaurants, so outlets need to know quickly if they are doing something wrong in order to correct it before losing customers," he concludes. "Similarly, they can build on the things they do well."
The most attractive aspect of the service for many independent publicans, however, could well be the cost.
Prices start from £36 plus VAT per visit, increasing for tailored questionnaires and reports and other special requests.
For more information go to www.marketpublic.com.
Visits and consumer surveys open window on specific targeting of customers
Through its website, Market Public has quickly built up one of the largest mystery shopper databases in the UK. As well as setting them to work on visiting pubs, the agency aims to find out more about their lifestyles to help operators target specific kinds of people.
It can also carry out consumer surveys using its members and has already conducted research that shows pub-goers are prepared to travel further for superior quality food, drink and customer service.
"This really reflects what we are about," says managing director Kevin Davies. "The lessons learned from mystery visits can help raise standards across the whole industry."
Case study: Bar One Nine, Keynsham, near Bristol
A pilot exercise for the Market Public mystery shopper scheme was carried out Punch Taverns lessees Alison and Richard Smith, who run Bar One Nine in Keynsham near Bristol. Alison and Richard took over the run-down pub a couple of years ago and have seen business soar since they transformed it into a modern café-bar outlet.
The venue is now completely smoke-free and the couple will be recounting some of the secrets behind their success at The Publican Marketing Conference on November 3. Transforming the the venue was firmly based on sound marketing principles - in particular clearly targeting the business at a particular group of customers by training staff to understand what Bar One Nine is all about and to create the right atmosphere. Although sales figures suggest the strategy has been a success, the possibility of exploring more deeply the customer experience through mystery visits is already helping the couple make further improvements, as Alison explains.
"Measurements of customer satisfaction sit alongside our other management information to provide a complete picture of the health of the business. We value our EPoS data but we were short of information about our customers, knowing whether customer satisfaction was going up or down. We had no perfect idea of what people feel about what we are doing.
"People tell us when things go wrong but apart from that customers tend to just come and go. You can ask them whether everything is all right but you can't give them the third degree, you can't go into any detail."
Bar One Nine worked closely with Market Public on the questionnaire, coming up with 20 questions for the mystery visitor that homed in on the issues of most importance to that particular business.
"We were also interested in who Market Public were going to send us," she says. "The results would not have been much use if the mystery customer was not in our target group - that was a key point for us. But we were able to find out what kind of people they were, what newspaper they read and so on. We were also able pick the