Morrisons is bringing in a mystery shopping agency to monitor stores in areas such as availability, customer service and store standards.
The move is part of a plan by CEO David Potts and group retail director Gary Mills to drive up performance levels of its core supermarkets.
Morrisons would not reveal which company it has employed to carry out the mystery shops, but a spokesman said “they will be in our stores every month, looking at different elements of the store experience which can affect customer satisfaction”. Stores would be rated using a points system based on key metrics, he added.
As well as providing feedback on general performance, the spokesman also confirmed that “each store will be scored every month on a small number of measures that can influence the staff bonus.”
Sainsbury’s also uses mystery shopping experts to monitor store performance, with each store being rated against the local competition. By contrast, the Morrisons model will focus solely on its own stores.
Members of a Morrisons staff online forum have raised concerns regarding the bonus link, particularly in relation to availability.
“We know we should all be polite and helpful to customers, and hopefully most of us are capable of this,” said one employee. “But if one of the criteria is that the mystery shopper could buy everything they needed then I’m worried because, for whatever reason, the gaps on our shelves are bloody ridiculous.”
Earlier this year Mills told The Grocer Morrisons was carrying out a major push on availability, including trialling a new cloud-based ordering system at a small number of stores.
“We are looking at the whole end-to-end cycle in terms of replenishment from the depot to the shelf-edge,” he said.
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