The world of a secret shopper is an ideal world for all those who are extremely passionate about shopping. Secret shoppers not only get to do pleasant things on the job, they also get paid. Secret shoppers are people who are hired just to "shop". Apart from that, they have another function that most shoppers can only dream of - they are the complaints section, the suggestion boxes and the potpourri department rolled into one, that really gets the action done fast.
Business competition and the consequent desire of people running customer oriented businesses to get their enterprises into very competitive shapes, and the need of the companies to get an independent viewpoint other than the regular employees report, spurred the creation of the secret/mystery shopper.
Secret shoppers are normally assigned three basic tasks:
1. Observation - The mystery shopper enters an assigned store/establishment and follows a list that are usually predetermined, like - Merchandising Price listings, Courtesy and integrity of employees, Order and cleanliness, Telephone and phone-ins handling, Service Performance of duties and competencies, few other points for observance that employers categorize as priorities to improve the over-all standing of their individual firms.
2. Evaluation - The mystery shopper then fills out a form on which evaluations from observations are noted.
3. Filing of a Report - Reports coming from the secret shoppers are then collated for management evaluation aimed to further improve the firm or stores competitiveness in the market.
Other than the report being an evaluation of the business from a customer’s point of view, it also serves as the management’s tool at validating and cross-referencing report coming from its direct employees.
For this service, the secret shopper is usually paid anywhere from seven dollars to fifteen dollars. The pay may not be very attractive for starters but as in any job, secret shoppers get paid better as they become good at it. The normal pay today is about thousand dollars for seventy five businesses that are checked in a month.
The competition is also tough for secret shoppers. Presently, there are more than two lakh mystery shoppers employed by about seven hundred and fifty companies. This profession is gradually gaining popularity with the masses and more and more people are entering this field. Being paid for shopping requires the application sheets to be well filled up to the detail. One should avoid grammatical and spelling errors and leaving blank spaces in the application form as this can diminish the chances of landing assignments. Employers also value short and detailed information without the reporter being critical. When assignments are given, short, concise, detailed and on-time submission of the reports can greatly increase chances at having more assignments. The secret shopper may even get to pick their assignments of choice.
Even as many prospective applicants can find this job interesting, about 70% fail to land more assignments often due to lack of informative details, incomplete reports and failure to file the reports on time.
One condition though is that a mystery shopper signs a confidentiality clause i.e. the shopper cannot reveal the job or disclose particulars of the assignments other than those specified by the employer.
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