Mystery Shopping Practices Made Better

by Ron Jacobsen Marketing Research and Transcriptions Advocate

When people hear the term mystery shopper they think of people that visit stores and fast food chains like regular customers but are actually hired to critique the way the employees would handle their concerns and if it is in line with the company’s protocols in terms of service. That in more ways than one is just a portion of what they are actually doing. The mystery shoppers are tasked to follow a certain guideline that resembles something like that of a quality check form and see if everything on the given list is being done.

These are the things that the Mystery Shopper would normally take note of as they walk into a store:

Check the number of employees
Check the time it takes employees would greet customers as they walk in.
Tag the names of the employees
Indicate friendliness, this is done in an objective manner based on metric scales submitted by the company seeking the service of the mystery shopper.
Take note of the questions that were asked before the employees were able to help find a particular product.
Indicate the types of product shown
Take note of the sales approach used by the employee/s
Indicate if the employee attempted to close the sales and if any upselling was done
Take note if the employee/s would invite the shopper to come back again
Indicate the cleanliness of the staff and the store in compliance to the standards set by the company.
Indicate the speed of service
Note the overall satisfaction rating of service provided.

Sometimes the mystery shopper is assigned to transact in a way that is not typical of a normal shopper and indicated the procedures and knowledge ranking of the employee that is assisting them. These situations can vary from pretending to have a particular food allergy at a restaurant or demand to have a set of clothes altered in a particular period of time.

Mystery shoppers are then required to take photos, count the people during the visit, and many more other relevant measurements that may require a camera, stopwatch and more. After which they are asked to log in their data to the mystery shopper’s company where the data collected is analyzed and made into a statistical analysis report allowing a comparison of how varying stores or establishments are doing against each other and of course the defined criteria set by their respective companies.

Now imagine if you could find a way to make more people involved and if you could only gather the information from these people seamlessly and in real-time. That thought is now quickly becoming a reality. With the growing number of people that are currently using smartphones, companies can now recruit not just mystery shoppers but actual customers to participate in a mobile survey that can be attached to the products that they purchase or the services that they receive. All with just a simple scan of the product/service Barcode or QR Code. This could take them to a mobile survey that they can easily answer and submit. They can have the option to anonymously log their feedback through their mobile phones, capture the product using their mobile phone cameras, and take note of the people that helped them with just a few short clicks on their phones. Doing this would be giving them the feeling of importance and providing the company with the much, needed data for a comparative study that only traditional mystery shoppers could do in the past. Best of all it’ll be less costly, and with the right promotion or customer incentive you can get a huge amount of people to participate making the data even more significant. Imagine how much more improved your company shall be as everyone shall always be on their toes cause of the fact that every single of their clients could log in their feedback at any given time. There is no denying of how mystery shoppers can help improve a business, more so when you combine it with modern technology.