About A Mystery Shopping Survey

It needs no introduction to say that mystery shopping survey has been found to be the best way of self assessment of a company involved in direct customer interaction. The many types of surveys used to find the state of customer satisfaction have proved their utility and so has special shopping. Once used widely in the retail sector this method is now being used extensively in all possible businesses like automotive industry, self storage industry, catering business and also financial services. Special shopping supplements all other surveys and monitors the service levels of a company.

In a mystery shopping survey , the special shoppers maintain anonymity while shopping at an establishment. The shopper is entrusted to evaluate the employees through direct interaction either in person or over the telephone or both. This not only measures the service quality of the establishment but also helps in comparison with the other establishments engaged in similar exercises. This method is specially suited to companies having multiple outlets or chains. They can evaluate the impact of locations as well as the local response to the company guidelines. The surveys are designed specifically for each company and the parameters can range from a few to many as per the requirement of the company engaging the special shopping survey agencies. Some companies even add cleanliness and presentation of the employees to the list of objects under survey. The findings are made known to the employees for them to improve and are often used to design training programs for them.

For mystery shopping survey to be fully effective its findings should be evaluated together with other forms of surveys. Since the company has to deal with various sections ranging from its employees, distributors and ultimately the end users in the form of customers, the views of each of these sections should be surveyed to get the maximum benefit of each. A preliminary survey of the customer views may be made to form the basis of special shopping survey. This will help to incorporate and verify the areas that the customers are most concerned about. Generally it has been found that a good behavior of the staff and a gentle manner can do magic. A solid knowledge of the products and the ways to use them are often found helpful by the customers. So these two factors should always be part of the mystery shopping survey questionnaire.

Sometimes the whole method of survey is resented by the employees as they consider it spying on them to find their faults. They complain that these methods are more interested in catching them on the wrong foot rather than helping them to fulfill their duties. So it should be made a point that, like identifying the rotten tomatoes it should also aim at identifying the performers and rewarding them to encourage them. It can have a positive effect and more and more employees might get encouraged to reap the same reward if not more. To remove any doubts and fears in the minds of the staff and to let them work normally, it should be ethical not to name the people except those who are performing exceptionally and deserve special mention. The method not only utilizes the service of the outsiders but also sends the staff members to do special shopping at other outlets to find out firsthand what it feels to be on the other side of the counter. Mystery shopping survey is a learning process and many times this has proved to be effective too.

Secret Shopping

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

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