More than a score: How mystery shopping reveals what really drives customer experience

The customer experience. It's the one thing that every business wants to get right, and commits an enormous amount of resources to in determining what that experience should look like. But where brands often drop the ball is on consistency. All the CX planning in the world means nothing if a brand cannot constantly deliver on those objectives, to the same standard, year on year.

A Qualtrics XM (Experience Management) Institute 2025 global consumer survey of more than 20 000 consumers found that 34% of consumers who had had negative brand experiences spent less money. As a result, global consumers would spend $2.1 trillion less, costing brands that delivered poor customer experiences around $865 billion in lost consumer spend.

Maximising customer experiences to maintain a competitive edge has never been more important, especially as consumers are more demanding, discerning and fickle today than ever before. Closing that gap between consumer expectation and brand reality with consistency is no longer a CX goal, it's a brand imperative.

Harder for human-based operations

That is undeniably easier for brands operating in digital spaces, such as subscription-based services, e-commerce stores, digital-first solutions, digital media, streaming services and consumer technologies.

But what about those services where critical parts of the experience are delivered by people, and rely solely on staff interactions to create and sustain the customer experience?

The hospitality industry, including restaurants, is one of those sectors. Here, service standards rest solely in the hands of different people who have to show up every day, and work together to create those memorable customer experiences.

Objective customer viewpoints

This is where mystery shopping research comes into its own. Based on the in-store experiences of an undercover research team, hospitality mystery shopping delivers an objective view of what customers experience on the ground. These audits help venues and brands see what is happening at an operational level that either enhances or diminishes their customer experience.

When undertaken regularly, this research solution assists brands in identifying key trends, benchmarking performance, pinpointing problem areas and measuring whether operational interventions are making a difference.

It enables brands to accurately measure whether their service and operational standards are being delivered consistently across all their different stores, locations and teams - which is absolutely vital in this sector.

Wimpy Guest Experience Assessments

For the past few years BMi Research has worked on an ongoing basis with Wimpy to evaluate its customer experience journey. Several waves of research are conducted each year as part of the Wimpy Guest Experience Assessment programme, where mystery shoppers assess the actual in-store customer experience across the Wimpy network. The most recent wave covered over 400 restaurants nationally.

The assessment considers the full customer journey at these stores, from the time a new customer steps into a restaurant, to the time they leave. Every nuance is assessed from the customer's perspective, including the likelihood to recommend the brand to friends and family.

"The longitudinal nature of this programme means that Wimpy can track performance over time rather than relying on a single snapshot. The measurement framework also gradually evolves over months and years , allowing new measures to be continually introduced.  This points to the value of this long-term tracking approach in understanding and improving the customer experience," says Michele Daines, head of Research at BMi Research.

Beyond NPS scores

Among the interesting findings from the latest research wave was the relationship between individual service experiences and customer advocacy.

Promoters were considerably more likely than detractors to experience positive service behaviours such as staff availability, attentiveness, a warm restaurant atmosphere and being thanked or invited back when leaving.

"This demonstrates why looking further than a single, overall satisfaction or NPS score is important. You need to go deeper. This helps a brand identify the specific behaviours and operational touchpoints that are associated with more positive customer experiences, and extract the learnings to apply elsewhere," Daines adds.

Far-reaching CX applications

Although it is a structured research methodology, the application of mystery shopping research is flexible in nature: it empowers brands to use real-world evidence to make necessary changes and frequently as needed. This includes operational changes such as staff training, shifting operational priorities and service improvements.

In the case of multi-sites or franchises, it allows for differentiation between individual stores and regions, and can separate isolated problems from wider operational issues.

Customer expectations continually shift, and brands standards change. Mystery shopping maintains pace by allowing research measures to evolve accordingly.

"Brands always want to know if their customer experience is right; if it's performing as it should be and delivering against its objectives. But you can't answer those questions if you aren't measuring how that journey is being experienced by your customers at the different touchpoints over time. That is the only way to truly understand CX gaps, and what to prioritise to fill them," Daines concludes.