Mystery Shopping

• Mystery shopping is carried out both on the telephone, which is the usual first point of contact with a supplier by both potential and existing customers, and through shoppers visiting a site.
• In advance of doing any mystery shopping, the factors to be evaluated are discussed and agreed with the client. Then an “evaluation sheet” is drafted, which gives a scale for every factor to be evaluated so that consistent and fair scoring can be achieved time after time. This is also agreed with the client in advance.
• For every call or visit made, a stand alone report is written so that it can be shared with the people involved. These reports not only give the scores but the reasons for those scores and suggest improvements. These jargon-free reports are written in very plain language so that people at all levels in the organisation find them interesting and easy to understand.
• After every mystery shopping project a detailed final report is written comparing the performance of the different parts of the organisation that have been mystery shopped and suggesting how companywide improvements could be made.
• An important purpose of any mystery shopping is to determine how effectively an organisation is selling its services or products. For example, is any attempt made to offer effective follow up to a telephone call or is it left to the caller to telephone again?
• My small team of mystery callers provides the common-sense approach to mystery shopping that clients need.