The Mystery Shopper’s Manual

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The Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) is now offering the Gold Certification program on DVD. Instead of waiting for a workshop to come to your town, or spending time and money to travel to a workshop, you can get the most widely-recognized mystery shopper certification at home, on your schedule. You can even complete the certification while you are in your jammies!

Although certification is not required to be a mystery shopper, the MPSA’s Gold Certification is an effective way for new secret shoppers to get up to speed on how to be effective shoppers, and for more experienced shoppers to demonstrate to mystery shopping companies their qualification and commitment to being great secret shoppers. It can help you get more and better assignments, faster.

Many MSPA companies actively recruit Gold Certified mystery shoppers. They know that the shoppers who go through the certification process are often more professional, more reliable and produce better quality reports. Because mystery shopping companies (and their clients) value certified shoppers, many MSPA-member companies provide advantages to Gold Certified shoppers such as first access to plum assignments, including better-paying assignments.

Gold Certified secret shoppers are in demand, but supply can not keep up with demand. There are fewer than 5,000 Gold Certified shoppers out of an estimated 1 million mystery shoppers. The live workshops could never get to everywhere that shoppers live and work, but the DVD can reach every shopper.

What is the difference between getting certified at a workshop vs. with the DVD program? In terms of content, there is no difference. The DVD and workbook include the same information covered in the live workshops. Shoppers who get certified with the new DVD program will receive the same information as those certified at a live workshop.

Click here to learn about MSPA mystery shopper certification.

There is another new development. The test for shoppers becoming Gold Certified (whether through a workshop or DVD) now includes an observation and writing component. This new requirement will make Gold Certified shoppers even more valuable to mystery shopping companies.

Need another reason to get the Gold DVD? You get to see me present the workshop! ;o) Many of you know that I developed the Gold workshop for MSPA, and presented it nearly 100 times across the U.S. and Canada. To create the DVD, MSPA recorded a special workshop presented specifically for the DVD. The workshop was professionally recorded and produced on DVD. You can watch it all in one sitting, or watch a little at a time as your schedule permits.

Want to learn more about certification? You can get all the answers about mystery shopper certification at the MSPA site.