Sinclair conducted an in-person mystery shopping program with a national bank client with over 1,800 branches over five years. After that time, the client decided to stop mystery shopping their branches. After six months of stopping the mystery shopping program, the bank’s CEO started to personally see and hear from customer feedback comments that service wasn’t at the level it used to be. The bank CEO restarted the mystery shopping program without the bank branches’ knowledge. The mystery shop scores came in a little over 10 points lower than when the bank last mystery shopped. The bank decided to continue mystery shopping and notify the branches about the program. The mystery shops helped the bank refocus on customer service, branch cleanliness, and ensuring certain processes were occurring, returning the service levels to customers’ expectations.

Sinclair’s regional grocery store client with over 230 stores had a major issue with grocery store shelves constantly being out of stock of items for purchase. The out-of-stock items were costing the client not only lost sales, but the loss of customer loyalty because customers were turning to competitors to purchase these items. Sinclair set up an in-store audit where we had our auditors visit each store randomly one time per week to measure the number of out-of-stock items. The audit program put focus on what items were commonly out of stock across the chain as well as if the store management teams were making sure newly received stock was being put on the shelves in a timely manner. The audit program increased the client’s same-store sales and improved their overall customer satisfaction with items being in stock.

Sinclair conducted in-person mystery shops, telephone mystery shops, and in-person audits for a client. The client requested that we set up an automated process to import their additional external data into our NetReports Dashboard. The client used many different systems and reporting tools, but it was too many systems to train hundreds of their employees on and to maintain. Sinclair’s NetReports reporting system was customized to allow the client’s employees to access one system to get access to mystery shop results, audit data, help desk data, and numerous other pieces of data all in one easy-to-use system. This process ultimately saved the client tens of thousands of dollars.