Mystery Shopping is the practice of using trained shoppers

to anonymously evaluate customer service, operations, employee integrity, merchandising, and product quality Mystery Shopping goes by many names:
Secret Shopping

Mystery Customers
Spotters Anonymous Audits Virtual Customers Employee Evaluations

Performance Audits
Telephone Checks

 When location, pricing, and product

assortment are no longer unique, service is often the key to success or failure It costs 10x more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one One unhappy customer will tell 5 other people of their bad experience with service

 Why customers leave:

69% poor customer service
13% poor product quality 9% competitive reasons 5% other 3% move away 1% die

What gets measured, gets done Tom Peters.

 Monitors and measures service performance

Improves customer retention

Makes employees aware of what is important in

serving customers Reinforces positive employee/management actions with incentive-based reward systems Provides feedback from front line operations Monitors facility conditions - asset protection Ensures product/service delivery quality.

 Initially, mystery shopping was a technique used by

private investigators to prevent employee theft primarily at banks and retail stores In the 1940s, Wilmark coined the term mystery shopping and began using the method for evaluating customer service In the 1970s and 80s, Shop n Chek popularized mystery shopping by gaining extensive publicity In the 1990s, fueled by the internet, the mystery shopping industry experienced rapid growth and acceptance. Into the 2000s, the creation of software packages such as SASSIE and Prophet have revolutionized the industry

 Worldwide growth of industry Nearing $1.5 Billion (USD) worldwide More focused on improving customer service than on

policing bad employees Clients becoming more sophisticated in use of mystery shopping Faster reporting from field to client using the internet More diverse and specialized services

 Any business/organization that needs to monitor

its operations, facilities, product delivery, and service performance

Banks Retailers Manufacturers Call Centers E-Commerce services Government agencies Hospitals Associations Franchise operations Promotions agencies

Hotels Restaurants Movie Theatres Recreation parks Transportation systems Fitness/health centers Property management firms Freight/courier services And many more

 Mystery Shopping Specialists

Marketing Research Firms

Private Investigators Merchandising Companies Training Companies Advertising/Promotion Agencies

Others.

 In person/on-site shops

Telephone shops
E-Commerce web site shops Hidden video/audio recording Full narrative shops (qualitative) Checklist shops (quantitative)

Purchase & return shops

Discrimination (matched-pair) testing.

 Step 1: Setting Objectives & Goals

Step 2: Program & Questionnaire Design

Step 3: Defining & Recruiting Shoppers Step 4: Data Collection Step 5: Data Preparation Step 6: Reporting

Step 7: Review Findings