How startups like Ipay are turning to mystery shopping to ensure customer satisfaction

CHENNAI: When 37-year-old Krishna Lakamsani walked into a small retail store in Nalgonda district in Telangana, the owner was not in town and the shop was being managed by his wife. He showed her an SMS he had received from IPay Tech, a marketplace that enables consumers without Internet access to buy products from e-sellers through local retailers.

The message said he could purchase a pressure cooker via the kirana store, but the lady was clueless about it. Finally , after being connected to the call-centre by her, Lakamsani left, but little did the lady know that it was the CEO of IPay who had just visited the store.

Mystery shopping is a path that startups are taking in the hyper-local service sector to ensure customer satisfaction. In a sector where last-mile delivery of services is crucial, being pro-active, not reactive, is the mantra. Dressed in casual tees, leaving behind their iPhones, taking local modes of transport and speaking in the local dialects, CEOs and other executives visit merchants or place orders posing as customers to assess how services are delivered at each stage.

"For a hyper-local service startup which deals with a blue-collar workforce, it's crucial to ensure that people are always on their toes. That's where mystery shopping comes to help," said Anubhab Goel, co-founder and CEO of Zimmber, a household handyman service company based in Mumbai. In several cases, the trigger has been negative consumer feedback.

"Many times, customers reached out to us saying the merchants are not sticking to what we had promised them. That led us to finding out for ourselves what exactly is happening in the market," said Neeraj Jain, CEO and co-founder of Zopper, a hyper-local marketplace app, which has taken to mystery shopping for the past six months.

The crucial aspect is conveying the outcome of mystery shopping to the merchants. "We create situations for our teams, which they do not realise are created by us, and then we give feedback to them accordingly ," said Bharat Ahirwar, CEO of errand-running service GetMyPeon.

While Ahirwar believes revealing it would prompt the team to take it lightly, Jain of Zopper notes that if not communicated correctly , it would seem like mistrust. "Once we have figured out the issue, we try to put it across to the merchant in a subtle way through the relationship manager," he said.

Others like Ganesh Balakrishnan, co-founder of mobile payment app Momoe, take decisions based on the situation. Companies like PepperTap, a mobile hyper-local grocery delivery service, incorporate insights from mystery shopping into their training sessions.