» Mystery Shopping Assignments

Many people think that a mystery shopping assignment involves purchasing things and casually observing the store scenario. Well, the reality is quite the contrary.  This job is more than just buying things from the store and coming home. It is about keenly observing business functions, investigating employees work, logical reasoning, AND buying goods this comes last. Remember, you need to prepare a report and submit it to the company you are playing detective to.  Your report is a crucial part of this task. Somebody may get a pink slip based on your judgment. Therefore, you CANNOT afford to be lax in this job.

Although a mystery shopping assignment does not demand fixed working hours, you need to be disciplined to do the job seriously. It is not good to take advantage of the convenience and flexibility of timings offered in this job. All undercover shoppers must take their task as a mission. Somebody depends on you and trusts you.  Imagine you are a detective who is here to scrutinize the work environment and report anything doubtful. You are here to review performances hence you need to be completely unbiased, honest, and accurate. If you think you missed out something on your first trip, you can have another visit. But, make sure that the report you prepare is true and based on valid observational facts.

Remember, a hidden shopper is not just a shopper, but a representative of the company. There is a certain degree of accountability for the company you are working for. Therefore, it is seen that only those shoppers who are dedicated and diligent towards their work stay in the company for long. Others either drop out or are fired.

One blunder that a hidden shopper can make on a mystery shopping assignment is disclosing his or her identity. Say, a shopper visits a department store and the cashier recognizes him or her. Do you think the shopper will be able to grasp the real work scenario at this place now No the cashier will at once alert the other employees on the store. No matter how hard the shopper tries, he or she may never be able to get the true picture, as everything will seem fine in the store now. The mission will fail. No hiring company would want this. The shopper may even lose the job, if he or she is unable to maintain the disguise in the future.

Therefore, a high level of intelligence and discretion is needed to carry out a mystery shopping assignment . Shoppers must not forget that they are required to present a comprehensive report of their observation and judgment. So, if you are not confident of remembering all the details, its better to keep a small notebook and jot down everything. This will help you prepare an exact report that covers all aspects, without missing a single detail. A report without conclusion is regarded incomplete. Here comes the use of your analytical and logical reasoning skills.

Last but not the least take a mystery shopping assignment that you feel comfortable doing. This is because the business who has hired your services depends solely on your work to judge the performance of the employees. Moreover, you have to maintain a good reputation and credibility factor to get more of such assignments in the future.

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You may register with a special shopping company to become a special shopper, but you will not earn anything until you land a mystery shopping assignment . It is only after completing an assignment that you can call yourself a special shopper. The assignments can take you to any place from a retail store to a restaurant, to a car servicing center, furniture storage or even an amusement park. These are the establishments that are usually surveyed by the special shoppers for checking the quality of service at the place and this job is a serious and important one that needs the application of all the skills of a special shopper.

Once you get registered with a special shopping company, you will have to wait for the first mystery shopping assignment . Usually at the beginners stage you will be given a choice of the easy shopping jobs and you will also be given a free training on the basics of special shopping and the ethics and codes to follow. Each assignment will also carry an instruction list which you will have to follow as precisely as possible. Following it with precision is necessary because the assignments are designed keeping certain aspects of the survey in mind and any diversion will not provide the correct data and the whole process of the survey will prove futile. A company will not pay for the second time and your agency will lose reputation and the final result will be your exclusion from the list of shoppers of the company.

It has been often seen that any mystery shopping assignment does not pay much and you need to complete quite a few assignments to actually earn something of substance. So you can register with a number of companies to find more than a single assignment. In that case you should make sure that you complete the assignments in time. Time is a great factor in this business as the company going for special shopping will not wait long for the report. Normally an assignment needs to be completed within 24 hours. So you should choose only those assignments and that number of assignments that you think will be able to complete within this period. Maintaining time schedule is a quality of the shopper that all agencies appreciate and this can mean that you will be selected for the assignments of higher categories.

The payment that you receive for each mystery shopping assignment can vary according to the nature of the assignment. Some that the beginners are offered are very low paying but easy to complete while the experts are offered very prestigious assignments that are high paying but needs utmost care and precision to handle and complete. Moreover, the expenditure at the shop is reimbursed but you should remember that there is a limit to it. The payment that you will receive will include the fees for the job and the amount you have spent at the shop for the assignment.

A mystery shopping assignment is the basis of the whole system of special shopping. The designing of the assignment by the agency is crucial and so is the part of the shopper to carry it out effectively. The answers to the questionnaire accompanying each assignment are extremely important for the company because it will give the clear picture of the situation that is prevailing there. The shoppers need only to note their observation and not comment on the situation. And that is what they are paid for.

Mystery Shopper Program

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Welcome to the secret shopping blog, our diary of the secret shopping business.

I am laughing to myself. Today I am working in the –inbound call center handling calls for self storage facilities around the country. I just got off the phone with a caller from Colorado. He was interested in storage and I asked him some questions and gave him the features and amenities.

I finally gave him the price and I could hear the phone ringing in the background. He asked if I could hold on for a second and I said yes. Well, he must have clicked the wrong phone button because he answered my line with HIS storage company name. He was shopping me!

He quickly recognized his error because he proceeded to hang up on me. He must have been quite embarrassed. He was just price shopping to see where his property compares. But he forgot a few rules…

First rule in shopping other businesses: Don’t Flub.
And once you flub it is basically impossible to recover.

Since I had given him the price and was winding up for the close, he should have just said he needed to get the other line and ended the call with me. But since he only got one price from me for the unit that sounded right for him, he did not get very far in his price shopping hunt.

There was really no way for him to cover up the Flub. His only resort was to hang up and hope I didn’t hear the storage facility.

It was good for a laugh on our side of the call!

Natalie

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