Your company can invest millions in product design, digital tools, and training, only to lose a customer after a brief interaction.
It happens when a caller gets bounced between departments, when a web form is cluttered with confusing financial lingo, or when someone visiting a branch is left unattended for too long.
Financial decisions are deeply personal and high-stakes, with choices that can shape a person’s life for years. And with so many companies offering competing products and promotions, what ultimately wins business is trust and customer service.
To accurately measure the true shape of the customer experience, you need a Mystery Shopping Program.
These programs show how existing and prospective customers research your brand, compare you to competitors, navigate your digital journeys, contact your front-line teams, and visit your branches in person.
The results give you clear direction on where to coach teams, fix breakdowns, and improve execution at scale.
Below are the top five mystery shopping programs built for banks, investment firms, lenders, and other financial services providers.
Picture the call you want every prospect to have when they’re asking about a savings account, a loan rate, or what coverage actually includes. What you want for them is clear answers, a calm tone and easy next steps. The end goal is simple: earning a new customer.
Now picture a non-customer calling to ask what’s needed to open a small business account.
The representative confidently says, “Just bring your driver’s license and your initial deposit, and we’ll get you set up.” The caller feels prepared and takes time off work to visit a branch the next morning.
One critical detail is missed. The employee never mentioned that opening a small business account also requires original Articles of Incorporation or a registered trade name. When the person arrives at the branch, waits, and finally meets with a Business Banker, they’re informed that the account cannot be opened.
That single omission signals incompetence and a lack of respect for the person’s time, making it far easier for them to walk away and choose a different financial institution.
By using mystery shoppers to place these phone calls, you will see how often vital information is missed and the positive moments when some employees go the extra mile.
Typical evaluation areas for this program include:
Brand voice - Professional tone, clarity, and confidence in explanations
Accuracy of information shared about products, eligibility, or next steps
Whether the conversation stays helpful when the customer sounds uncertain
Whether staff ask smart follow-up questions that move the inquiry forward
Gaps between branch and call centers, including call routing and handoffs
A customer arrives for a scheduled meeting with an advisor and takes a seat in the waiting area. Ten minutes pass beyond the appointment time. No call-up.
Another ten minutes go by. Still nothing.
Eventually, they approach an employee and mention they’re waiting. The employee checks and realizes the advisor, Mark, is in an office far from the waiting area and didn’t know anyone had arrived.
Nearly 40 minutes after the scheduled time, Mark comes out, apologetic.
In the end, all the customer wanted were straightforward answers to “help me choose the right account,” “explain my borrowing options,” or “tell me what I’m actually paying for.” Instead, the experience creates frustration before the conversation even begins.
To capture such insights, mystery shoppers visit a branch exploring a service, asking tailored questions and observing everything from entry to exit.
What you ultimately find is how your environments and staff combine to shape a visitor’s in-person experience.
What this program typically measures:
Greeting, wait handling, and overall professionalism on arrival
Maintenance of compliance standards
Clarity around requirements, documents, timelines, and next steps
Consistency of information and brand portrayal across branch locations
Exterior and Interior cleanliness and maintenance of locations
Customer experience only improves when it’s measured with intent.
Here are 5 critical fixes to your CX measurement strategy.
Most people assume their financial choices will last a long time. So, they tread carefully when choosing a company to invest in.
They conduct extensive research, consult trusted sources, and ultimately narrow the field to a few providers.
You could be one of those providers. But a prospect could also choose your competitor for something they do differently.
Competitive mystery shopping shows you exactly where your competitors differentiate. Shoppers engage with other financial providers in your market and evaluate how inquiries are handled, how digital responses unfold, and what offers and rates are actually presented during the interaction.
Here is one way this can look in practice: we ran an IntouchShop® mystery shopping program for a financial services client seeking competitive insight.
Our shoppers, both customer and non-customer, visited branches across national and regional banks. They then evaluated interactions with bankers and tellers around specific products and service experiences.
Each shopper followed a defined scenario, tailored to whether they were an existing customer or making a first-time inquiry.
The results created a clear, side-by-side comparison of how national and regional competitors performed on welcoming, engagement, product knowledge, and clarity. That visibility showed our client exactly where they stood in the market and where coaching or training adjustments were needed to close service gaps.
Other examples of what this program can capture:
Product knowledge and compliance
Quality of customer interaction
Digital experience, location environment and in-person interactions
How options, fees, promotions or timelines are positioned
Notable strengths or friction points in competitor experiences
Competitor technology
Does your institution give off a vibe of being modern and organized?
That assessment often happens in your digital space.
Now imagine someone filling out a car insurance inquiry form, spending 15 minutes entering personal details, vehicle information, and coverage needs, only to reach the final screen that reads, “You can't finish opening your account. You must visit a branch."
Moments like this should not occur in your digital journeys, and a customer’s time should be respected from the start.
Online mystery shopping programs observe this by testing your digital experience, from research through inquiry. This is also where a customer becomes a lead and when a lead response is evaluated.
Another common use case is auditing compliance during online interactions. Financial services brands use internet mystery shops to capture the disclosures presented during account inquiries or application steps and verify that the right information is communicated.
A snapshot of what the digital experience program can cover:
Ease of finding product details, rates, fees, and policy information
Test account creation and login flows across mobile and desktop
Lead response rate, response time, and professionalism of the reply
Follow-up checking clarity of the next steps, and if the inquiry moves forward
Consistency of messaging across pages, forms, and email confirmations
Digital accessibility measures
Curious to know the investment return on mystery shopping?
See how you can measure the ROI of you mystery shopping program.
Someone walks into a branch to ask about an auto loan after researching rates online. The banker explains the monthly payment and mentions that they are “pre-qualified.”
The numbers sound reasonable to them, but the employee fails to distinguish between pre-qualification and final approval. Final approval is where underwriting can still adjust terms based on income verification or credit review.
The conversation continues, and disclosure documents are presented. But the details that matter most: how the rate could change, what documents are still required, and what the exact next steps look like, are not fully broken down.
The person leaves believing the deal is locked in, unaware that key terms can still change during final approval, setting the business up for a disappointed customer later.
Similar complexity shows up in Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) conversations, personal loan applications, credit card approvals, and investment account openings. The tension and doubt often sit in the details.
Mystery shoppers engage in these higher-stakes conversations and document how guidance is delivered from start to finish. The results show you exactly where you can provide prospects with greater clarity and ultimately win more business.
Key evaluation areas of this program include:
Clear explanation of approvals, rates, fees, and repayment terms
Proper delivery and explanation of required regulatory disclosures
Professionalism and confidence when addressing complex financial questions
Explanation of funding timelines and what happens after submission
Do you want to measure your financial institution’s unique customer experience opportunities?
Intouch Insight’s proprietary mystery shopping service, IntouchShop®, provides visibility into service quality, staff knowledge, digital experiences, and regulatory compliance.