Reviewing the Competitive Environment and Customer Experience at Merrifield by MAB
MAB is known for delivering exceptional developments in the last 26 years, from grass roots communities and inspired city skylines to thriving commercial and industrial projects. Believing in the importance of an exceptional customer experience, they reached out to Property Republic to conduct a mystery shopping exercise for their Merrifield project in Melbourne’s north. The objective of the exercise was to provide the team with insights into the current sales process and how it could be further improved.
The Property Republic re-engineered the mystery shopping exercise for this project, developing an innovative methodology that would provide MAB with intimate video feedback, plus created an online survey for shopper feedback.
As well as assessing the service standards at Merrifield, the Property Republic team also explored the competitive environment by mystery shopping four competitors: Botanical, Cloverton, Highlands, and Olivine.
The Approach
Phase 1: Selecting Participants
The first step involved selecting ‘shoppers’ for the mystery shopping exercise.
In January 2020, four unbiased groups were selected to complete the mystery shop, representing different buyer segments:
First Home Buyers
Next Home Buyers
In March 2020, an additional three shoppers were recruited for a deeper dive. They represented the following market segments:
Looking for a townhome
Wanting to buy in a new community
Seasoned investor
A total of four mystery shoppers were sent to Merrifield, one of whom also assessed competitors. Two of the mystery shoppers were asked to have a lower budget and be open-minded to the townhome product.
Phase 2: Collecting and Reporting on the Findings
To get the most out of the mystery shopping process, the Property Republic team created a closed Facebook group where shoppers would submit a short video log of their experience at every stage of their process – initial enquiry, follow-up and sales centre visit. Being able to provide MAB with this ‘face-to-face’ feedback was highly beneficial.
As well as their video log, shoppers were required to fill out a survey about their experience.
Each shopper was provided with a comprehensive guide that outlined their agreed tasks, including enquiry method, uploading of video diaries to the Facebook group, completing the online survey and forwarding of all email correspondence and a record of phone conversations. They were also required to comply with the set deadlines and confidentiality agreement.
Several factors were looked at during the mystery shopping activity, including:
Grooming and initial meeting
Presentation of the Sales and Information Centre
Meeting with the consultant
Product recommendation
Offers and incentives
Other information provided during the visit.
The exercise was extended until May 2020 to assess three months’ worth of follow-up.
The Results
A report was presented to MAB detailing essential observations and takeaways, along with recommendations. Property Republic highlighted the following:
There is a need to agree on the key information that must be communicated to make the process consistent.
Client continuity of sales consultant is highly regarded.
Data capture is vital and the discipline around gaining every prospect’s details must be non-negotiable.
The follow-up conversations require structure and must be aimed towards providing a solution.
These findings served as a baseline for the current customer experiencing, helping Merrifield create and refine the sales process and build standards to enhance the customer journey.
The Feedback
“Property Republic developed an extensive and comprehensive mystery shopping exercise to evaluate the customer experience of our projects, in comparison with other, local competing developments. By hiring a range of mystery shoppers, having them document every step of their experience through videos and surveys and creating a Facebook page for these shoppers to share the results, we were able to acquire a broad range of qualitative data on the performance of our sales team.
Thanks to Property Republic’s innovative project diagnostic strategies, we now have valuable insights into how we can continue to achieve amazing results through prioritising the customer experience.”
Matthew Planner
General Manager Communities, MAB Corporation