In the United States most of the financial service firms, especially banks, hire mystery shoppers to evaluate customer service. With the increased use of new technology such as ATM and Internet banking, a vast majority of banking firms are now in a state to differentiate their customer service from their competitors. This encourages customer satisfaction and boosts productivity.

The success of financial institutions such as banks depends to a great extent on the performance of their employees. Banking institutions hire mystery shoppers from mystery shopping firms that specialize in evaluating the performance of banks. Check Mark, Inc., Marketing Endeavors, LLC ? Business Evaluation Services (BES), and CKA Group, Inc. are some of the mystery shopping companies that focus on evaluating customer satisfaction in banks.

The role of banking mystery shoppers is to determine the quality of customer service and to identify the areas that require improvement. To be more specific, banking mystery shoppers assess the administrative functions and interpersonal skills of bank employees. They evaluate sales effectiveness of platform and teller staff by analyzing whether the bank staff listens to its customers, how friendly tellers are, how much time the customers take to get to a teller and much more. In addition, they attempt to evaluate how much the bank personnel are knowledgeable of the bank?s products and services.

Banking mystery shoppers use different mystery shopping techniques such as face-to-face, telephone, postal, Internet and video assessments. With face-to-face shopping technique, banking mystery shoppers can evaluate the sales and service levels of bank employees. Mystery shopping through telephone calls helps the shoppers to judge whether the staff engages in courteous communication with customers.

After evaluating the customer service and performance of bank employees, a report is submitted to the branch manager. This is used to measure the changes in performance over time. Reports provided by banking mystery shoppers include a comparison of branches within a bank and banks in a region. Also, they provide recommendations for the branch manager on training and behavior modification.

Mystery Shopper provides detailed information on Mystery Shopper, Mystery Shopper Jobs, Become a Mystery Shopper, Free Mystery Shopper and more. Mystery Shopper is affiliated with How To Become A Secret Shopper.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marcus_Peterson
http://EzineArticles.com/?Banking-Mystery-Shoppers&id=354594