Mystery shopping is a tool used by market research companies as a tool to measure quality of retail service. Companies send mystery shoppers to 'act' as shoppers or to legitimately shop in return for some combination of cash, store credit, purchase discounts, or the goods or services purchased. Instructions to mystery shoppers can include a script of behavior, questions to ask, complaints to give, purchases to make, and measures to record, such as time it takes to receive attention from an employee or receive a service, or the responses given to questions.
Mystery shopping is also known as:
- Secret Shopping
- Experience Evaluation
- Mystery Customers
- Spotters
- Anonymous Audits
- Virtual Customers
- Employee Evaluations
- Performance Audits
- Telephone Checks
Why Mystery Shopping?
The purpose behind the concept of Mystery Shopping is to allow businesses to gain improved customer insight into how the customer service related functions of their business are performing, and utilize the information gathered as part of performance management and service improvement initiatives.
History of Mystery Shopping
Mystery shopping began in the 1940s and as a mechanism to measure employee integrity. Tools used for mystery shopping assessments can range from simple questionnaires to complete audio and video recordings. The Internet has provided a medium for mystery shopping online. Many mystery shopping companies are completely administered through the Internet, allowing potential mystery shoppers to use the Internet to register for participation, find mystery shopping jobs and receive payment.
When a client company comes on board with a company providing Mystery Shopping services, a survey model will be drawn up and agreed to which defines what information and improvement factors the client company wishes to measure as part of the mystery shopping process. These are then drawn up into survey instruments and assignments that are allocated to shoppers registered with the mystery shopping company in question.
Some of the common details and information points shoppers will be looking for include:
- the date and time of the pre-visit phone call
- the name of the store on each side of the store visited
- number of employees in the store on entering
- how long it takes before the mystery shopper is greeted
- the name of the employee(s)
- whether or not the greeting is friendly
- the questions asked by the shopper to find a suitable product
- the types of products shown
- if or how the employee attempted to close the sale
- whether the employee invited the shopper to come back to the store
- cleanliness of store and store associates
- speed of service
- compliance with company standards relating to service, store appearance, and grooming/presentation
Shoppers are often given instructions or procedures to make the transaction atypical to make the test of the knowledge and service skills of the employees more stringent or specific to a particular service issue (known as scenairos). For instance, a mystery shopper at a restaurant may pretend they are lactose-intolerant, or a clothing store mystery shopper could inquire about gift-wrapping services. Not all Mystery Shopping scenarios include a purchase.
From there, the shopper will then submit the data collected to Mystery Shopping company in question. The data is then reviewed and analyzed before quantitative and qualitative statistical [analysis] reports on the data are then returned to the client company that enables measurement against the previously defined criteria.
Locations
The most common venues to be mystery shopped are retail stores, fast food, and banks. Virtually any context where there is a customer/business interaction is open to mystery shopping, including on-line surveys. More and more companies are beginning to see the value in experience measurement techniques such as mystery shopping, and as such larger organizations such as Hotels, Retail Chains, and even Airlines have engaged companies for these purposes.
Reward
Pay is highly variable, depending on the company facilitating the mystery shop, the experience level of the mystery shopper, availability of mystery shoppers in the area, and shop being tested. Novice mystery shoppers can earn less than minimum wage after accounting for time and cost involved to perform the scenario. Mystery shoppers must read and understand the requirements of the client. Gas mileage to and from the store is not usually reimbursed. Many scenarios involving the purchase and return of an item require the mystery shopper to wait for an uncompensated period of minutes or hours before they can return the item purchased.
In the case of nonreturnable services, such as a meal at a restaurant or an evening's stay at a hotel, mystery shoppers receive the nonreturnable service as their sole compensation. Reports on restaurant and hotel assignments can be much more detailed than other shopping reports, and can take hours to complete.
The answers to the below questions are VALUABLE to companies and they are willing to pay very well for the answers to them.
- How well were you treated?
- Was your overall experience positive or negative?
- Were the employees friendly and courteous?
- Did you encounter any problems?
As a Mystery Shopper, there's only one way to get the answers and that is by Mystery Shopping!
Want to see an actual mystery shopping questionnaire? Click Here
How much can you make as a professional mystery shopper ?
For example read this NY Times Article about a New York Woman that makes $7000.00 per month by mystery shopping! I want to be perfectly honest, I can not guarantee that you will make $7000.00 per month it all depends on you. I can guarantee that if you like to shop and would like to get paid for it, then mystery shopping is the perfect job for you.
GOOD LUCK
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