An Introduction to Mystery Shopping and Secret Shopping


The use of a mystery shopper first occurred in the 1940�s. Banks sent in a secret shopper to help prevent worker thief by observing their honesty and the way they treated account holders. Secret shopping soon appeared in the retail section.

Mystery shopping also called secret shopping is of the best tools a company can use to measure the quality of their products and customer support.

The secret shopper will ask questions, make complaints and note the responses of employees.

A secret shopper is someone who enjoys shopping and making money while doing it. As well as shopping, having a night out at the films or dinner for is a common day's work. They are given forms that reflect the type of business. The mystery shopper spends money while rating the quality of customer support, the cleanness of the premises and the ease of finding products. They are paid and often get to keep the product.

Mystery Shopping is now the practice of major and local retail stores, hotels, restaurants, film chains, apartment complexes, schools and even police departments. Any company that deals with the public will benefit from having a mystery shopper.

Mystery Shopping is a program that allows companies to learn about their business from the customer�s point of view. Both negative and positive aspects are pointed out. They may find that their end-caps do not attract sales or that selves are high for most customers. Perhaps the number of check-out stations does not match the week-end demand or employees may be rude.

Companies can learn what improvements are needed to improve customer�s satisfaction. Customer satisfaction means repeat customers and repeat customers improve the bottom line.

Mystery Shopping can go as deep as analysing product arrangements on a shelf, to see what promotions are jogging in store in what location and how they are perceived by store visitors up to the dress code and politeness of the staff.
Mystery Shopping is applicable to all types of business. Every business has customers and every businesses customer�s service can be measured using secret shopping techniques.

Businesses of all sizes and serving all markets have had tremendous success and gained valuable insights in to customer perception from well-structured secret shopping campaigns.

Regular mystery shopping visits are a must. A business must build up a history of feedback on their customer support offering, take on board the feedback and act on it and then continue to measure on an ongoing basis.
Continuous but small improvements are what work best.

Plenty of mystery shopping or secret shopping companies provide trials of their services. They recommend you take a trial with a reputable provider and see the kind of rich information they can provide on your organisation.

Secret Shopping may appear to be unusual way of going about measuring customer support and improving your business results, but, thousands of businesses have benefited from mystery shopping programmes the world over.

Make positive you act on the feedback and offer your team training in areas they came out weak in. Above all learn from the method and focus on continuous improvement. You will notice the impact on your business results.

0 comments: