For a company to keep its customers happy and to minimize the risk of them spreading negative rumors/stories about the products and/or the company, the attitude and work done by the service organization is important.

To check this, management can use the same improvement feedback arrangement as for checking up on the sales organization. Instead of using mystery shoppers however they can let some users of the products contact the service people to repair a product with prearranged errors.

1. Observations, dialogues, and interviews

Observational studies are used to get feedback on how associates act and how potential and real customers and users view a company and/or a product. The difference between dialogues and interviews is that in a dialogue, one is free to speak with another person while in an interview, one mainly follows a list of questions prepared beforehand.

2. Surveys/questionnaires

Such methods rely on the identification and election of a few variables out of a myriad of possibilities. The results are statistically processed and presented as numbers in the form of tables and diagrams. The investigator is in this case isolated from direct, personal, observations of activities.

3. Mystery Shopping

Mystery shoppers engage front-line employees in everyday customer service situations to provide management with a true, unbiased measurement of customer service and experience. Through their eyes the managers can understand what their teams do well and can build on identified strengths. The mysterious shoppers can also uncover hidden deficits where training sessions would be more beneficial.

3.1. On-site shopping

3.2. Phone Shopping

3.3. Internet/ web shopping

Source: http://complexityforum.com/aktuellt/handbook%20in%20innovation%20management.pdf