What exactly is the mystery of mystery shopping? Retailers hire mystery shoppers all the time to evaluate their staff and see if they are performing up to standards. There are no mysteries involved in this. Call centers have difficult “customers” phone their callers and put them to the test. The only mystery with that is whether the caller is a mystery shopper or just a consumer who’s having a bad day.

Perhaps the mystery is where to find mystery shoppers. Everyone knows they exist but how do you find one to help you test your system or personnel for flaws and faults. Putting either of these under pressure will almost always tell you where there is room for improvement. If there is a crack in the dam it will spread under extreme pressure. Eventually that crack will get big enough to cause a flood. That’s where mystery shoppers can help you, by preventing the flood before it affects your customers.

Here’s another mystery. What happens after the mystery shopper comes through and performs his or her duties? Do employees get fired if their performance isn’t up to par? Knowing that, does the mystery shopper temper the tone of the final report? Is it possible that the data the company receives could be incomplete or even erroneous?

These are all questions that are asked when a retailer, call center, restaurant or any other business chooses to hire a mystery shopper. Most mystery shopping companies, in order to avoid the personal influence of one individual, will send in multiple mystery shoppers and use other testing methods to evaluate whether or not a company is functioning properly. These “control” methods ensure that the flaws are detected and then subsequently corrected to improve efficiency.

The reason that mystery shoppers have that title is because no one in the store or on the other end of the phone can know what they are. This ensures that the reactions and actions of staff members are what they normally are, not a show put on for the benefit of the customer. With that in mind, everyone has a bad day from time to time, so failing in front of a mystery shopper doesn’t mean the end of a job or career. That person and that system will be tested again if you hire the right mystery shopping company.

Thanksgiving is over and the holiday shopping rush has begun. Are you prepared for what you are about to go through? The average consumer has to deal with products being out of stock, crazed parents searching for that special gift, and long check-out lines. As a business owner, particularly of a retail store, you are about to experience far worse. Your entire operation is about to be put to the test. Are you ready?

Believe it or not, now is the best time of year to hire a Mystery Shopper Company to send their professional consumers into your store to test your systems, processes, and your employee performance. Any of these will hold up fine on a slow day, but what happens when the madness of holiday shopping begins? Mystery shoppers can expose your weaknesses at times like these, hopefully before your paying customers do.

Doing an evaluation and analysis of performance early in the holiday season can help a business owner or manager make the changes necessary to ensure smooth sailing later in the season when things really get busy. Black Friday is a big retail day but this year there are many consumers waiting as long as possible to see if the economy shows signs of improvement. Large purchases in particular are expected to come late in the year or even after the New Year when the clearance sales begin.

Even internet businesses can benefit from the services of a mystery shopper during the holiday season. Having someone “use” your website and evaluate the look, functionality, and ease of purchase is a good move at the beginning of the season because changes can generally be made quickly through the site’s admin panel. Another set of eyes might be just what you need to tweak your site and increase your conversion rate.

Retail stores, restaurants, call centers, internet businesses, and virtually anyone who sells a product or service to consumers can benefit from the services of a mystery shopper company. Having someone not directly connected to your company act as a consumer making a purchase can be a huge benefit to you. As a business owner or manager you can use the information gathered by mystery shoppers to help your company run better during the holiday season and beyond.

Even if your business seems to be doing well, there is a good chance that there is room for improvement. Employees can perform better, techniques can be refined, and processes can be modified. All of these can have a positive impact on your bottom line, but how do you know where those improvements need to made and how to go about implementing them? Before you can apply a solution you must know what the problem is. That’s where mystery shopping companies can help you.

Companies that most often use mystery shoppers come from the retail, call center, and restaurant industries. In the retail industry, mystery shopping companies are invaluable in evaluating the performances of sales and customer service personnel, the lifeblood of any retail store. Rude or inefficient salespeople can offend your customers, causing them to go elsewhere. Detecting that behavior by using mystery shoppers can keep your customers happy and improve your profit margins.

If you run a call center, you may have the technology to record calls, but a mystery shopper can create a situation where your callers have to respond under pressure. That “difficult” customer is the ultimate test for even the best of your salespeople or CSR’s. How smooth can they be? Will they crack and let loose on the obnoxious person who’s on the other end of the line or will they continue to act like a professional despite the pressure? A mystery “shopper” can help you find out by being a mystery caller.

The restaurant industry offers perhaps the best opportunity to employ mystery shoppers to test your personnel and your entire system. Is your food good? Is the host or hostess polite and helpful? Do your waiters and waitresses know the menu and work fast and efficiently? You could even test your manager if you like by having your mystery shopper complain and see how the negative feedback is reacted to.

Mystery shopping companies provide all of these services and more. They provide an outside entity that can test the inner workings of your company for you. With this knowledge you can refine your system, upgrade personnel, or change processes so that they work more effectively. You can also provide more of what works. Many company managers feel that mystery shoppers will bring out only the negative, but they can also reveal what is positive so that you can build upon that.

Are your employees rude? If they were, how would you know? You might get a complaint from a customer but how would you know if it’s not just someone who holds a grudge against that particular person? The only way to be certain that the complaint is legitimate is to send your own people in to check it out. If the person checking is another company employee the individual being evaluated will know and be on his or her best behavior. That doesn’t tell you anything.

A mystery shopping company can provide you a solution. A third party with no connection to either you or your employees can give you a fair and impartial report on what happens in your store when you’re not there. Those who work in the store won’t know they’re coming and will act as they normally do under everyday circumstances. That type of information can tell you a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

Employee performance cannot just be measured by whether or not your employees are polite. Poor performance is sometimes the result of poor training or poor management. This is another area where a mystery shopping company can assist you. The reports prepared from mystery shopper visits can help you figure out exactly what areas need to be improved upon. It’s pretty obvious when someone is trying their hardest and just don’t have the tools to do what they need to do.

A mystery shopper can go through your processes, whatever they might happen to be, and give you a usability report. For a retail store, this could include the ease with which items could be found and the checkout process. For a call center it could be the wait time and timely manner in which questions are answered. Almost any type of business has a process and mystery shoppers can tell you if that process works properly.

If your business is functioning poorly, a mystery shopping company can help you improve it. If it is functioning well, you might be able to make it better. Let an impartial professional judge how your company works and bring those findings back to you. Your employees deserve the chance to show you what they can do when it counts the most.

Your bottom line is the amount of money you actually make after all of your expenses have been covered. That’s a simple definition but one that is accurate and applicable to this example. The answer to the question in the title is yes, a mystery shopper company can improve your bottom line. They can do this by evaluating how your company works and providing you the information you need to make it more efficient.

Go back to the simple definition again. How much do you, or more specifically does the company make “after expenses”? It’s those last two words that are the most important part of this question. Regular expenses are your overhead, manufacturing, taxes, salaries, and incidentals. Other items you can put in the expense column are human error and inefficiency. These can be eliminated by hiring a mystery shopper company.

A mystery shopper’s job is to go in to a place of business and shop, taking note of how the employees work and what consumers have to go through to make a purchase. If this process is difficult, they file a report explaining why and you as the company owner or manager can make changes to make it easier, saving you in the long run as your customers will be happier.

Streamlining the process may allow you to cut personnel, work less hours yourself, and free up your customer service personnel who currently spend all their time fielding calls and complaints. Eliminating mistakes and cutting back on unnecessary paperwork and waiting time can vastly improve productivity and therefore profit margin.

Here’s another example. Let’s say you run a call center for inbound calls. Your customers call in and have to go through a waiting period and then a series of transfers before they get to where they need to be. Some of these can be eliminated but you need to know what the process is before you can make the changes. A mystery shopper, or caller, can go through the system and report on its inefficiencies.

Regardless of what type of business you own, a mystery shopping company can help you improve your bottom line. The initial expense is well worth what you will save in the long run. Think of it as checking for leaks so you can patch the holes. Your company efficiency, no matter how good it is now, can be improved.

There’s always room for improvement. No matter how well your company runs there is always something that can be done to make it better. Looking at it from the inside may not provide you with any answers. The true beneficiaries of an efficiently run company are the customers. Only they can tell you if what you’re doing is working. The fact that they’re buying your products or services is one indication of success but how do you know whether or not making a few changes will increase those numbers?

A mystery shopping service can give you the answers you need to find your company’s weak links and improve on them. The best way to find out whether your customers are getting all that they can get from you is to hire someone to be your customers. These paid consumers are known as mystery shoppers and they can do what your own employees cannot do, tell you how well you are doing from a customer’s perspective.

What areas are there where you can improve on your company performance? The first thing that comes to mind is employee dedication and efficiency, something that a mystery shopper can evaluate for you. Because the person who is doing the shopping will be unknown to your salespeople, they will act and perform as they normally do, not rolling out the “red carpet” treatment like they would with a known company spotter.

The weak links don’t always have to be caused by the people who work for you. The system itself may be broken. This is particularly true with online businesses. An internet based business relies on its websites to be successful. The conversion rate of those websites can be improved by making usability easier. Once again, a mystery shopper can help you with this. By using the system and making a purchase they can evaluate what can be improved on and report that back to you.

Another weak link for your company could be your inbound or outbound call center. Inbound and outbound calls, like physical customers and web hits, are known as “points of contact”. Mystery shopping companies help you to seal up your weak links at these points of contact. Customer service and telemarketing almost always have flaws that can be corrected. A mystery shopping company has personnel who can evaluate either and help you to make those changes that will make your call center more efficient.

Mystery Shopping Services are exactly what they sound like. A person or group of people who are unknown to you or your employees come to your place of business and shop. On the surface, they appear to be just regular paying customers. The truth is that they are actually paid professionals who are looking for flaws in your operation. Retail stores have been using mystery shoppers for years, as have restaurants. Recently they have also been employed by call centers and even internet, or e-commerce businesses.

The mystery factor is what makes mystery shoppers such an effective tool in evaluating employees and company procedures. Since the identities and purpose of the mystery shoppers is not known to anyone except the mystery shopping service itself your employees will act naturally around them. This is the only way to gather accurate information about employee performance.

Your system or website doesn’t know whether or not those who are checking them are known or unknown, but it still makes sense to have an outside entity look them over and give you unbiased input. Another set of eyes and ears that are not connected to the company can be a valuable resource when you’re considering changes or modifications. They can also reveal weak spots that you may not be aware of.

How did your retail store perform over the holidays? Did you get a lot of complaints? Are you getting a lot of returns? The answers to these questions can be instrumental in the improvements you need to make before next holiday season. How were your sales numbers compared to last year? You can blame low numbers on the economy but how did your competitors do? You can usually find those numbers someplace.

Mystery Shopping Services are a tool. You can use them to evaluate and improve the operation and efficiency of your company. The concept was born in the retail industry but can be adapted to almost any type of business that has points of contact with consumers or clients. Used effectively they can vastly improve on what you are already doing and increase that all-important bottom line.

Once you have contacted the mystery shopper service how will you know when, where and how their people will be showing up or calling your place of business? It is best that you don’t know. The element of surprise is so important for a mystery shopper that no one, not even the owners or managers, should know when they are going to show up. This confidentiality will allow the mystery shoppers to do their job properly and ensure that you will get an accurate report of what goes on under normal circumstances.

A quality mystery shopper service will analyze your customers’ shopping patterns and behaviors and visit or call during your peak hours. The busiest times are when your points of contact are most strained. Your retail salespeople are under the most pressure, your callers or CSR’s are most likely to crack, and your systems and processes are most likely to break down. A mystery shopper can reveal where the weak spots are.

As far as where the mystery shoppers will show up, that is up to you as the company that hires them. If you have multiple locations you may want to have just one checked where sales numbers are low or you could leave it up to the mystery shopper company and let them decide where analysis is most useful. The service itself is about more than just doing the shopping. Every element of the experience will be recorded and put into a report that you can use to make changes if you need to.

The “how” of mystery shopping might seem pretty obvious but the exact details of who will be showing up and how they will present themselves is always kept confidential from those who work for you. Your mystery shopper might be a single person quietly picking out one item or a family doing some major shopping. For best results you might want to try both or a combination of shoppers somewhere in between.

The location, time, and dynamics of mystery shoppers are what make them a mystery, even to the people who hire them. These elements make them more effective and give you a better picture of what your employees are doing when they think no one is watching. This same erratic pattern of hitting points of contact at different times can also help you even if your company is automated, like an e-commerce company that does business using a website.

Mystery shopping began as a retail concept, but it is now used by other industries as well. The advantage gained by having an unbiased analysis of your company done by a mystery shopper service is something that has attracted the attention of business owners in a vast variety of industries who have never monitored check-out line times or stocked shelves to make sure inventory was available to their customers.

E-Commerce businesses use mystery shopper services to test their websites’ loading time and usability. Conversion rates can tell you where you are in comparison to others in your industry, but actual shoppers can tell you what’s broken and potentially how to fix it. How long does it take for your visitors to go from the landing page to the purchase or sign up page and what part of that journey can be improved on to speed up the pace?

Retail is, of course, the category where mystery shoppers are most effective. A retail operation is complex and involves multiple points where customer contact is necessary. Not only do your salespeople have to perform for you to be successful, but your store has to be set up and run properly, well stocked with the latest items that consumers want to buy. Those items need to be where your customers can find them and your personnel needs to know how to direct those shoppers to them. Mystery shopper services can help you evaluate whether or not that is happening.

Restaurants are prime recipients of mystery shopper benefits. You can have a friend or relative eat in your restaurant, but there’s a good chance that one of your employees might recognize them. You may not get an accurate evaluation from family either because they tend to be biased in one way or another. A mystery shopper service will provide you with a patron who has no stake in your business or a personal relationship with you that could distort their perception.

If you run a call center or any type of customer service operation your livelihood depends on the efficiency of those who have direct contact with consumers. Mystery shoppers can pose as these callers and find out if your system is working the way it should. That’s what mystery shopping is, finding your points of contact and testing them to their limits. Doing that regularly will help you understand your business better and make sure it runs properly.

How do you get a job as a mystery shopper? Business owners who hire mystery shopping providers want to know where those shoppers come from. What exactly makes them qualified to determine whether or not an employee is performing up to standards? Their report may put someone’s job on the line. How do you know that they will be fair and unbiased? These are important questions that deserve answers.

A mystery shopping provider will never send a shopper who is connected to you or your employees in a personal way, eliminating the possibility of bias. They will also never give you recommendations of termination on any employee. That is up to you after evaluating all of the data that is compiled by mystery shoppers who have visited your place of business. Most of the time, this will come from multiple visits that are done on different days of the week, both busy and slow.

The purpose of hiring a mystery shopping provider is to find out how efficiently your business runs and improve on it, not to test employees you’re looking to get rid of. Internal problems such as theft and skimming hours should be handled internally. Mystery shoppers are just trained to shop and report back on how that experience was. The availability of items, the check-out line wait, and the politeness and level of assistance given by employees are all elements of the report that will be put together by the company owners to make decisions with.

How does someone get to be a mystery shopper? The process is the same as it is with any other job. A mystery shopper applies for the job, goes through training so they know what the service is looking for, and then does their job to the best of their ability. Their performance is evaluated on a regular basis and negative reports are generally double checked by other mystery shoppers, particularly in the case of problem employees who might lose their jobs.

If you are interested in becoming a mystery shopper there is a phone number and link to a contact form at the top of this page. This mystery shopper service offers diverse opportunities for consumers from all different backgrounds and levels of education. You can actually get paid for shopping for those items that you use the most at all of your favorite stores and online locations.