In 2009, our own Rob Barry, Confero Account Executive, spoke with the Wall Street Journal's "The Numbers Guy" blogger Carl Bialik for his Waiting Game article. Rob provided insight from his experience managing mystery shopping programs for grocery store clients. Technology is moving at a much faster pace than 2009, and customer waiting time is a topic worth revisiting.

Whether you manage a bank, restaurant, service or store, you know that it's not realistic to reduce wait times for customers in every circumstance. If your company is one that prides itself on impressive and personalized service for every customer, wait times are inevitable. There are ways, however, to create more enjoyable waits for customers, and generate additional sales at the same time.

Developing customized mystery shopping programs across many industries has allowed us to see a variety of wait time strategies. Through measurement of these strategies and our own observations, here are ways that some organizations convert tiresome wait times into positive customer experiences:

Read the full article here.

We are pleased to announce that Elaine Buxton, president and CEO of Confero, was recently named vice chair of the Global Board of Directors of the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA). 

MSPA serves over 300 member companies worldwide and is the leading association for mystery shopping. In this new position, Elaine will help guide the organization toward its goal of stimulating the performance and use of mystery shopping services as a critical component of customer experience measurement programs.

Elaine's involvement with MSPA began in 1998 when she served on the organization's first board of directors. She served as MSPA's North America president in 2010. She looks forward to her new duties as vice chair, and continued involvement in this leadership position.