The term ‘mystery shopping’ appears to be mysterious to many who are still aren’t much aware of this unique part-time job. They are rather ignorant of the profession of a mystery shopper and assume that the latter is some kind of a secret agent or a spy. The truth, however, is far from different. Mystery shoppers or secret shoppers are the ‘detective eyes’ of major companies who need to judge or evaluate their business performance as well as their prevailing market standards. Mystery or secret shopping jobs are legitimate and are, in fact, those tools that help secretly assess product conditions and customer service rendered by the employees in a particular outlet or store. This ultimately leads to better business decisions and helps a company attain a bigger and better brand name.
For secret shopping assignments, the shoppers get the chance to travel and explore various outlets or stores in their respective areas, use a wide variety or products or services for free, dine out with family and friends in expensive restaurants, and so on. One might easily get a mystery shopping job but achieving success in this field requires a lot of effort, hard work and diligence – just like any other regular office job.
Those who have a fair idea on what mystery shopping actually is might also have this perception that it is easy to become a mystery shopper and get some very good shopping assignments and earn big time. However, there are some other crucial factors that determine the success of an individual as a secret shopper. Secret shopping involves the methodical scrutiny of the ambience of the assigned store, customer service offerings and promptness of the frontline staff and shopping assistants, employee conduct and finally giving an unbiased and honest verdict of everything observed in the form of written or recorded reports. Hence a secret shopper should have good surveillance skills and a rational outlook.
To become a reputed mystery shopper, it is essential to provide the client companies with honest and appropriate information on each shopping assignment. For this, one should be able to write a report logically with error-free grammar, must ensure that whatever he writes is to-the-point and easily understandable. There is no need to use high quality literature style as that would make the report all the more complicated.
Since millions of people across the world have access to the Internet, many mystery shopping companies have switched to online recruitment of mystery shoppers and also have provisions where the shoppers can submit their reports online. This endeavour has helped save considerable costs and time. For applying online, one needs to fill an online form with honest details. Once registered with a mystery shopping company, a shopper can carry out his assignments and submit the reports online while keeping a hard copy of each report.
It is not necessary that beginners hired for secret shopping assignments would have the required skill sets instilled in them. Mystery shopping companies offer basic and advanced training to all the hired individuals so that they can carry out their secret shopping tasks easily and do not encounter serious problems while on the job.
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