Mystery Shopper's Manual

Mystery Shop Report Design

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Do you ever wonder about how clients decide on the questions that appear on mystery shop reports? In theory, mystery shopping measures what is most important to the business. However, if care is not taken in the design of the shop report, the information the client gets (and the message they send to employees about what matters) will be way off base.

A few years ago, Office Depot hired a new CEO. He immediately noticed that sales were declining although scores on mystery shop reports were incredibly high. What is wrong with this picture? It turns out that the mystery shopping program was measuring the wrong things. According to CEO Kevin Peters, “Our mystery-shopping scores were correct, but our scoring system was not. We were asking the wrong questions.” The report was full of questions about whether the floors and restrooms were clean, and if the shelves were fully stocked. They were doing great at those things, but no one was taking care of the customers.
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What happens to my mystery shop report after I submit it?

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mystery-shop-reportOne thing many shoppers wonder about is what happens to their reports after they press “submit.” Who looks at the reports? What do they do with them?

Of course, every company and client may be a little different, but here is what happens in a typical situation.

First, the report goes to an editor or quality control reviewer. The job of the editor is to make sure that the report meets all of the client requirements. They look at things such as:

  • Did the shopper go to the right location?
  • Did they visit on the correct day, and at the right time?
  • Was the report submitted by the report deadline?
  • Did the shopper include all necessary scans and photos (e.g., receipt, photo of building exterior, photos of entrees, whatever the client has asked for)?
  • Are all questions answered?
  • Are all required comments and narratives present?
  • Are there comments for every No or N/A answer?
  • Is the spelling, grammar and punctuation correct?
  • Do the comments make sense or are they confusing?
  • Do the comments match the Yes/No answers?

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Why Are Some Locations Mystery Shopped While Others Aren’t?

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mystery-shop-locationsA question from a mystery shopper:

When I view the available mystery shops on job boards, I see a bunch of stores and restaurants that I would love to shop. But the locations that are close to my house are never listed! Why do they only shop some of their locations and not all of them?

There are several possible answers to this question, so let’s take a look at them.
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Bad Mystery Shopper Reports – What Is an Employer to Do?

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There are appropriate and inappropriate ways to handle a poor rating on a mystery shop report. Unfortunately, the manager of a Cape Coral, Florida post office chose an inappropriate way.

Mystery shop reports are supposed to give companies information they can use to identify where they are performing well, and where problems exist. Appropriate ways of responding to the problems identified in a mystery shop might include providing additional training to employees or changing staffing levels to avoid under- or overstaffing.

An inappropriate reaction? Presenting employees with a cake that looks like a pile of poop, in “honor” of their poopy report.
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Why Use Mystery Shopping?

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Why should businesses use mystery shopping? This video explains what mystery shopping is all about and how businesses benefit.

Should you tell your employees they will be mystery shopped? How are mystery shoppers selected and screened? How much does mystery shopping cost? These questions and more are answered in this video from MSNBC.

It includes interviews with employees and management of a grocery store that uses mystery shopping, as well as Judi Hess of Customer Perspectives and Jeff Hall of Second to None.

Do Employees Read Mystery Shop Reports?

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Question from a mystery shopper:

Do the employees who are mystery shopped read the reports submitted by shoppers? I sometimes return to shop the same location again, and I am concerned that employees will be able to figure out that I am the secret shopper if they have read the reports I wrote about past visits.

If they do read them, why would clients allow that? Doesn’t it make mystery shopping less valuable if the employees know exactly what was reported?

Many client companies do share mystery shop reports with the staff who were shopped. There are good reasons to do so.Continue Reading

Who Writes the Mystery Shop Questionnaires?

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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

Mystery Shopping as Undercover Patients

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hospital-mystery-shopperAs mystery shoppers, we are often asked to present a specific scenario, and we may have to “act” the part of a customer much different from ourselves. However, the mystery shoppers described in a recent story in the New York Times seem to have taken this to new levels.

De Gelderse Roos is a psychiatric complex in the Netherlands, about 40 miles from Amsterdam. They hired a consulting firm to provide feedback on conditions in a locked ward in the facility, by placing mystery shoppers posing as patients in the hospital. The “undercover patients” were psychiatric nurses who were given detailed back stories and extensive training before being admitted to the facility. And just in case things got out of hand, they even had a “safe word” to use when communicating with the actors playing their family members.

Although the typical mystery shopper would never be asked to do such a potentially dangerous assignment, it is interesting to learn about the ways mystery shopping is being used to make conditions better in all kinds of places.

Do Employees Know They Get Mystery Shopped?

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mystery-shopperQuestion from a secret shopper:

Do businesses that we shop tell their employees that they will be mystery shopped? I have heard that they do, but that doesn’t make sense to me. If we are supposed to be checking up on them, why tell them that they will get shopped? Do they tell them what we will evaluate them on? And doesn’t that mean that we are more likely to be spotted if the employees know to look for mystery shoppers?

Most businesses that use secret shoppers tell their employees about the program, and there are some very good reasons to do so.Continue Reading

Suggestive Selling and Secret Shopping

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upsellSuggestive selling, or upselling, involves suggesting additional items when a customer makes a purchase, or encouraging a customer to upgrade to a more expensive option. Perhaps the best-known example of an upsell is when the order taker at a fast food restaurant asks, “Do you want fries with that?” However, upselling is used in almost every kind of business.

Mystery shopping questionnaires may include questions about suggestive selling techniques used by employees. Here are examples of upsells that mystery shoppers may encounter:Continue Reading