Monday, March 29, 2010

Employing Effective Mystery Shopping Evaluation Methods, Assessing Business Locations through Mystery Shopping

Mystery shopping assignments are designed and conducted to provide companies with valuable information on their brand competence in the present market. The information thus gathered is used to bring about improvement in the overall business brand including the products and customer service. After all, a brand is known by the quality of products or services it offers to the consumers.
Mystery shopping companies hire secret shoppers to carry out brand evaluation as per their guidelines. In this process, a secret shopper is required to visit a business location disguised as a regular customer and carry out the tasks as assigned. The tasks include interacting with the employees and other customers and asking them various questions, make note of complaints, purchase certain products, evaluate product conditions, check out the co-operation of the employees while attending to the customers, etc. At the end of the mystery shopping assignment, the mystery shopper is asked to fill an online questionnaire with his unbiased feedbacks on the standards of products and services of that particular business location and submit it to the mystery shopping company. The company then reviews it and forwards to the client company.
To perform the mystery shopping assignments effectively and provide accurate details to the company, a mystery shopper is required have good surveillance skills and notice even the smallest aspect of a business. Typically, a mystery shopping assignment can either involve purchasing items or simply evaluating customer service. In the former case, mystery shoppers might have to pay the bills from their pockets. Nonetheless, companies ensure that they reimburse the amount alongside the usual payment for the successful completion of the assignment.
A mystery shopper is required to remain incognito during a mystery shopping assignment so that companies can visualize the clear picture of their operations in their business locations. In other words, though mystery shopping assignments are pre-designed by the mystery shopping companies, employees are unaware of the ongoing evaluation. Thus the atmosphere remains relaxed and the mystery shopper can witness how a business actually operates. The unbiased opinion presented in the mystery shopping report or the online questionnaire helps companies to improve their brand effectiveness, customer loyalty and increase sales.
Because mystery shopping jobs/helps provide companies collect accurate information on their business practices, this method is used in every industry. Although retail, restaurant, banking, fast food chains and, convenience store locations rely on this effective market research method, several other industries are following in the footsteps. Hence it has become difficult to spot an industry that does not employ mystery shopping methods.

No comments:

Post a Comment