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Mystery Shopping
- Observation is the Key to Mystery Shopping
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A Business Research Lab Tip
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Please note: we no longer offer mystery shopping services, but we thought you might be interested in this tip.
If you reached this page through a service that required you to pay, you probably are the victim of a scam. Reputable mystery shopping companies do not charge shoppers.
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Mystery Shopping is a method by which management can find out the specific types of things that occur in a service encounter.
Customer Satisfaction Research can fill this need to some extent, but Mystery Shopping delves into more detail and into non-service areas (such as cross-selling).
In a typical Mystery Shopping program, a "shopper" is hired to participate in a service encounter. The shopper is given a scenario, which might include a list of items to buy and questions to ask. Based on the observations made in the shop, the shopper fills out a questionnaire.
Questions for a Mystery Shopping program should be written from a different frame of reference than should questions for a customer survey. You are less interested in the opinion of the Mystery Shopper than her accurate observations of what actually occurred in the service encounter. Because of this, it is critical to avoid the typical "rating scale" questions prevalent in a typical customer satisfaction survey. It is better to formulate specific questions that ask "what happened", and provide discrete sets of answers which cover, in general terms, the possible outcomes of a particular aspect of a service encounter.
For example, if you were interested in the level of courtesy exhibited by a service employee, it would be inappropriate to ask the shopper to answer the question:
"How would you rate the level of courtesy exhibited by the employee?"
__ Excellent
__ Good
__ Fair
__ Poor
It would be more appropriate to address the issue of
courtesyin the following manner:
Which of the following occurred during the service encounter? (CHECK ALL THAT APPLY.)
__ The employee greeted me.
__ The employee smiled.
__ The employee thanked me for my business.
__ The employee seemed genuinely interested in helping me.
Was the employee rude at any time during the encounter?
__ Yes (if yes, explain)______________________________
__ No
Of course, many more questions would need to be asked about the encounter -- questions about the accuracy of the cash transaction, any cross-selling attempted by the employee, the quality of the items purchased, the cleanliness of the establishment, etc.. The ones above merely address the specific issue of courtesy.
The acid test you should put a mystery shopping questionnaire is this -- According to the questionnaire, who is the service expert? Is it the shopper, or is it you, the business owner/manager? If, after reading the questionnaire, you believe the shopper is being put in the place of the service expert, revisions are necessary.
Do you own or manage a small business, or a department of a large business? Check out our special E-Value2003 Employee Satisfaction Survey, specially designed and priced for businesses with 1000 or fewer employees.
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