Mystery shopping is a marketing tool used by many established agencies to obtain comprehensive and detailed data on the quality of their products and services as perceived by their customers.

To test your company's front-line operations, professional evaluators pose as buyers to assess factors such as accessibility of products, quality of services, customer care, employee management and more. Shoppers are often given instructions or procedures to make the transaction a typical to make the test of the knowledge and service skills of the employees more stringent or specific to a particular service issue (known as scenarios ). For instance, mystery shoppers at a restaurant may pretend they are lactose-intolerant, or a clothing store mystery shopper could inquire about gifts.

Companies having a way to take feedback relating to products sold and/or customer services find this to be the ideal way of making necessary change. This means that specific areas within the business needing improvement can be identified, rather than using a hit or miss system.

Mystery shoppers are "undercover customers" who gather information about service, quality, cleanliness and other issues on behalf of business owners. You go into stores, restaurants, banks, apartment complexes, and all kinds of businesses posing as customers.

As an under cover customer you ask questions, make purchases, return merchandise and other things that regular customers do, but with a twist. You are also making observations about cleanliness, service and other issues.

Would your business like to see and hear what you staff say and do when youre not there? Contact our mystery shopper team to find out more.

Mystery customer evaluation team.