The Mystery Shopper’s Manual

Although anyone can make a mistake during a mystery shop visit, there are some mistakes that are completely avoidable. Here are ten mistakes that can derail your shopping career, but can be easily avoided with proper preparation and attention to detail.

Failure to read the guidelines and form before the visit. In order to know what you need to do, you need to review the client’s guidelines and the report form you will complete after the shop visit. Without this preparation you won’t know what questions to ask, observations to make, required purchases, etc.

Going to the wrong location. Believe it or not, this happens all the time. There are many clients that have multiple locations in the same area. When shoppers do not verify the address they may end up at the wrong one. Even worse, some shoppers go to a location of another business, not the client.
…continue reading Mystery Shopper Mistakes – Top 10 Visit Mistakes

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A new year is a good time for a new start, especially when it comes to running your mystery shopping business. Here are some moves you can make now to get organized and take your mystery shopper business to a new level of profitability in the coming year.

Clear out your file cabinet. Get rid of outdated shop notes, printouts of reports and guidelines, and other clutter. In general, you should keep shop notes ad report copies for at least 90 days, although some mystery shopping companies may recommend keeping them longer.

Go paperless. OK, going completely paperless is probably not realistic for most people. However, you may be able to reduce the amount of paper that flows through your office. Instead of printing copies of the reports you submit, save them to your computer as PDFs. Scan papers you would normally keep and get rid of the papers. (Before getting rid of things such as receipts, make sure that there is no chance the mystery shopping company will ask you to produce the original.)
…continue reading Get Off to a Good Start in 2011

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Being a great secret shopper is simple, but that does not mean that it is easy. Secret shopping is a business, and successful secret shoppers are professionals who take their work seriously. The tips in this article will make you a great secret shopper and help you get more and better secret shopper jobs.

Doing these seven things will make you a better—and a more successful—secret shopper.
…continue reading Secret Shopping Guide – 7 Tips to Be a Great Secret Shopper

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Each of us has at least one food that we simply refuse to eat, and there may be others that we do not care for or should not eat. This may be due to health reasons, religious prohibitions or just personal preference.

Most of the time this is not a problem on restaurant mystery shops. The guidelines may state that you must order an appetizer, entree and side, but not specify the exact menu items to be ordered. There are shops (usually fast food), though, that will specify specific foods to order. Even if you may choose any menu item you wish, there may be limitations on special requests, such as asking for sauce on the side or substituting items.

So what if someone has a long list of foods that can not or will not eat? Can they still do restaurant mystery shops? Sure! Here are a few tips anyone can follow to make sure their food preferences do not clash with the mystery shop requirements.
…continue reading Restaurant Mystery Shops and Food Preferences

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Most mystery shopper jobs require that you include several timings. These may include:

• The time you arrived and the time you left
• How long you were at the location before you were greeted by an employee
• The time between placing an order and receiving it
• How long it took to check out
• And many others.

Timings are vitally important to the client. Many of their standards to relate to client service times. Customers want speed and efficiency, and clients need to know that they are meeting client expectations.

The client may ask for timings rounded to the nearest minute, or they may want them down to the second. How can you get the specific timings needed to make your mystery shopper reports accurate and complete? Here are some of my favorite tips.
…continue reading Getting Timings on Mystery Shops

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Many mystery shoppers spend a lot of time in the car, traveling from one client location to another. That can be lost time or, with a little planning, you can put it to good use. Here are some ideas on how you can use your travel time.

Plan your route. Use mapping software, such as Microsoft Streets and Trips, to plan your route before you get in the car. With this software, you can enter a list of addresses, and the software will map out the most efficient route. That way you will not spend a lot of time (and gasoline!) backtracking or getting lost. …continue reading Making the Most of Travel Time

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Human beings seem to have an aversion to quiet. Too often, we rush to fill up any silence with a stream of words. When you are mystery shopping, that can be a mistake.

As mystery shoppers, we are there to observe and report, not to influence the outcome of the shop. One of the best ways to do that is by talking no more than is necessary.

Obviously, we need to speak on mystery shops. There are questions that need to be asked or answered, and appropriate conversations to hold. Saying too little is almost as bad as saying too much. But saying too much can affect the outcome of the mystery shop.

Here are some ways that talking too much on a mystery shop can make the shop go wrong. …continue reading Be Quiet and Let Them Talk

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On a mystery shopper job, there are dozens of details and vital bits of information that need to be collected in order to complete an accurate report. On some shops, it may be possible to make notes or use a digital recorder to capture the shop. However, no matter what, a good memory is an important asset to a mystery shopper.

Although tools such as digital recorders are useful, they are not infallible. Batteries die, switches get turned off, or other sounds interfere with what you want to hear on the recording. Recorders should be thought of as backup, not your primary means of getting and recalling the data needed for your reports. And because there are times when it is difficult or impossible to make notes without being observed it is critical to develop a good memory.

Here are some tips on developing memory skills that will not fail you:
…continue reading Tips to Improve Your Memory

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Have you ever looked at something on a mystery shop report form and wondered, “Who comes up with this stuff?” Most of us have, at one time or another, seen report questions, scenarios and other shop requirements that seemed unrealistic or just plain weird.

Although they may seem strange to us, those things are in the report for a reason: The client wants them there. The mystery shopping company may make recommendations or provide suggested guidelines and report forms, but the client decides what information they want from shops.

Businesses have service standards, and many of the questions on mystery shop reports relate to those standards. When you see a question about how long it took to get your food, or how much time passed before you were greeted, that is because that client has standards about how long those things should take. The same goes for things such as saying thank you, using your name or other shop details. …continue reading Who Writes the Mystery Shop Questionnaires?

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