Common Questions for Mystery Shopper

Whether your organization is an experienced user of Mystery Shopper research or is just now considering the implementation of a Mystery Shopper program, we provide the following information to help you gain the maximum value from your program.

Q: How do you select your Mystery Shoppers?

A: The first step in selecting the appropriate Mystery Shopper(s) is to understand any unique profiling requirements. For example, when conducting a study on banking investments, Clients would request that the Mystery Shoppers be above a certain age and present an appropriate level of professionalism.

For another example, it may be necessary for the Mystery Shopper to hold a certain piece of equipment, such as a handphone or laptop, or have a certain status, such as a Gold Member of a certain airline frequent flier program.

After validating the profiling requirements, we select Mystery Shoppers based on their ability to ‘act’ their scripts in a natural manner which is enhanced through training and role play.

With respect to observation skills we prefer to equip our Mystery Shoppers through training based on the necessary observation requirements unique to the Client program.

Q: How do you select the volume of interactions such as the number of calls or visits?

A. The determination of how many Mystery Shopper interactions are to be done depends on a variety of interrelated factors including the size of the team to be studied (such as a Front Desk or Call Centre queue), the frequency of the type of scenario to be undertaken, budgetary requirements, the due date for results delivery and more. This is not solely a ‘statistics-based’ decision.

Your Mystery Shopper provider will be able to work with you to determine an appropriate volume of interactions.

Q: Where can you run Mystery Shopper programs?

A: We currently run programs in more than 25 countries globally in more than 15 different international languages. Whether you plan to Mystery Shop a single retail outlet or an entire global network, let us know how we can help.

Q: Is there a standard price for running a Mystery Shopper program?

A: Actually not – finalizing a Mystery Shopper budget involves evaluating the type and complexity of the program, the channel to be studied (for example Face to Face vs. Contact Centre), types of scenarios to be undertaken, the profile of the Mystery Shoppers required, the number and type performance standards to be studied and more.

The set-up and design of an effective Mystery Shopper program is the key to the success and aligns all stakeholders and expectations before the program launches.

Q: How do I know results from my Mystery Shopper program are accurate?

A: For interactions that can be recorded, such as in all recommended Contact Centre based Mystery Shopper programs, a high degree of accuracy can be maintained by arranging for our dedicated Service Quality team to conduct the evaluations.

While we ask our Mystery Shoppers to formally document their evaluations and supporting comments, our final evaluation determination is made by our dedicated Service Quality team who have been specifically trained and calibrated in the nuances of each program.

For interactions that cannot be recorded, we require our Mystery Shoppers to formally document their evaluations and supporting comments. Based on this documentation our Service Quality team assigned to the program can provide confirm scoring, provide a high level of calibration and detect trends.

Some Client programs are very ‘compliance’ based which involves scoring on a Yes / No basis – this type of program tends to a high level of accuracy with a relatively lower level of degree of behavioral analysis.

Other programs involve a higher level of behavioral analysis along with compliance and we generally score these ‘caliber’ based standards on a broad scale such as Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor.

Caliber based standards involve higher levels of subjectivity but do lead to greater insights and opportunities for developing the personality of the interaction.

We are pleased to provide customized quotations for services at no obligation.

If you would like to learn more about Mystery Shopper and how we can help you, please send us your enquiry by clicking here.