Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Mystery Shopping Methods to Earn Part-time and Assess Retail Service for Improvement

Mystery Shopping, also referred to as Secret shopping, performance evaluation, service checks and front line evaluations, has become a widely-accepted tool for market research in terms of quality of retail service assessment.

Mystery shopping does not require any expense from the shopper’s side except for a certain level of responsibility and professionalism, which too are offered as training by companies. Companies make it a point to provide adequate training and tips for improvement so that mystery shoppers can perform the assigned tasks effectively. The registration process of mystery shopping involves filling an online form and post registration, the companies start offering job opportunities on the first come first serve basis. So an e-mail address and a phone number should be provided during registration.

Mystery Shopping is a unique and fun-filled job as the mystery shoppers not only get paid to evaluate a product or service, but also enjoy various other benefits, like, enjoying scrumptious meals/dinners at costly restaurants, visit entertainment parks with friends, watch the latest flicks at popular movie theatres, and so on. The only major challenge is that the entire mystery shopping assignment should be carried out in secret with the mystery shopper posing as a regular customer. Thus, little bit of acting skills are required.

Companies from nearly all domains use mystery shopping methods. Shopping malls, hospitals, residential apartments, boutiques, eye-clinics, beauty parlors, car service stations, gas stations, amusement parks, hotels, resorts, fast food chains, restaurants, etc. are some of the popular business locations where mystery shopping is performed. The reports gathered through mystery shopping assignments allow companies to get feedbacks on their brands from an unbiased customer’s perspective and thus upgrade them. Hence, the mystery shopping concept is a vital part of every business that employs it.

The increasing popularity of mystery shopping jobs has made it quite easy to locate job vacancies. The only fear is that of falling prey to a scam site. Therefore, an individual needs to look for and avoid the sites that have vague information details and ask for huge sum of money just for registration. Genuine market research or mystery shopping companies can be located in online directories. These sites enlist legitimate mystery shopping companies that have mystery shopping job opportunities. One can check the company’s terms and policies, payment norms and privacy policies before signing up as a mystery shopper.

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