The term “Mystery Shopper” brings many different ideas and thoughts to mind. For some, they think of it as a way of spying on the employees, or a way of catching them at their worst. For others it is a way of simply checking up on them when the boss is not around.

There are many reasons to utilize a shopper service. However, the most effective and “Profitable” way to use a mystery shopping  service, is to use it for the purpose of understating how your typical customers are being treated and the level of service your employees are providing them. 

By approaching the use of the service in this manner, you can begin to use it as a tool to train your sales staff to better serve your customers needs. By taking this approach, you will also discover other potential areas that may need to be improved upon such as your employee’s current sales techniques and their overall general level of product knowledge.

When you are able to uncover specific areas such as these, you then have the knowledge you need to equip your staff with the necessary tools to provide the level of service your customers expect. After all, if you are not servicing your customers the way they believe you should, your competitor just might.
 
During the past few years we have discovered each company’s individual approach to customer service, sales techniques and employee expectations are unique to their company regardless of the similarities in their industry.

Therefore, we encourage all new customers as well as our current customers to take this approach to setting up their forms. Also, it is important to periodically review the forms to make sure they reflect current expectations as these often change. The minimal cost to do this is greatly outweighed by the benefits received.

One of the other obstacles we have found is that many stores that utilize our service, start out with the mindset of not really knowing what they want to discover from the use of this service. Therefore the typical response is to say, “Let’s try the program for a month and see what happens”. The problem with this approach is that there is no clear objective. Therefore, it is difficult to see the actual benefit. When you take the time to clearly identify your goals and purposes for using a mystery shopper service, you will be able
to effectively determine the benefits received by the results achieved.