Office Depot's President on How “Mystery Shopping” Helped Spark a

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Reprint: R1111A When Peters became president of Office Depot’s North American operations, in 2010, its customer service scores (as graded by a third-party mystery-shopping firm) were soaring—but sales were falling. To understand why, he went undercover, quietly visiting 70 stores in more than 15 states. He talked to customers and observed their behavior. What struck him most was how often they walked out of the store empty-handed. It turned out that Office Depot’s customer service scores depended on factors that shoppers didn’t really care about—such as the cleanliness of floors and bathrooms. And its employees were offered incentives to focus on the wrong things. (In fact, the company learned that some of its associates preferred interacting with stock over interacting with people.) Peters’s conversations with customers gave him three insights: The chain needed to offer smaller stores, dramatically improve the in-store experience, and add value with services such as shipping and copying. Office Depot has since rolled out 30 pilot stores, retrained associates, and begun to see the first signs of improvement.