» Real Secret Shopping

Real secret shopping can be an asset to any business, whether it is big or small. This is because it gives you an honest perspective of what happening with the person who matters the most – the consumer. Many business owners are still a little apprehensive about hiring a covert shopping service to do an assignment for them. It can be very helpful to know just what these kinds of services do and how they can be helpful for your business.

Research Tells Us

Before getting into the technicalities of real secret shopping , its important to look into more traditional research strategies and know why they do not always work. What every business is looking for is customer feedback direct from the customer – this will give you a clear idea of what is working, what customers would like to see and what needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, the only ways to really get this information is via consumer surveys. When completed correctly and honestly, there is nothing like a consumer survey to give you the quality feedback you need. But more often than not, a consumer feedback would not be filled up at all. Even if you offer something in exchange for a completed survey, chances are that the information you will get will be sketchy and incomplete.

Anonymous shopping services give you the advantage of putting a completely impartial customer right on the ground floor. They will be able to give you a complete and honest run-down of what the consumer experience is really like in your store. Apart from that, they can concentrate on specific areas of the consumer experience as well. For example, perhaps you are concerned about how customers feel about your stores return policy. Are you interested in knowing the feedback regarding customers of a particular profile Under cover shopping services can help you get all this information and more.

How It Works

If you are interested in hiring the services of a real secret shopping group, its best that you do a little research first. This is for two reasons – one is that there are a lot of shoddy shopping services out there. Doing a background check first can help you avoid making a bad decision. Secondly, there are a number of quality check shopping services that specialize in certain fields. For instance, it is not uncommon to find companies that offer shopping services for hotels or restaurants.

Next, you will need to assess exactly what you want out of your real secret shopping plan. Apart from making a personal assessment of this, you will also need to talk to a representative from the shopping service to draw out a game plan for the shopping assignment. There are a number of services that you can use for the assignment – for instance, shoppers can take photos of product displays, return merchandise or test your customer service helpline. There are a lot of options so it is best to be clear about what you want out of the assignment.

Another thing to remember about undercover shopping companies is that it is best to use their services on a regular basis. This is important as it keeps track of whether any new changes you have made are working. By regularly assessing your business from the consumer perspective, in a completely impartial manner, you will get a much better grip of where your business is headed. Investing in the services of real secret shopping is a surefire way to ensure your business is always on the right track.

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Welcome to the secret shopping blog, our diary of the secret shopping and mystery shopping world.

I met with one of our secret shopping clients yesterday and was reminded of just how important we are to the people we shop and the clients we shop for. This client’s company uses our secret shopping scores in their performance and salary reviews. If an employee does not excel in his or her shops, there is no increase and no bonus.

This is probably the way it ought to be. The customer interaction is all important. If employees are not taking the customer interaction seriously and trying to give customers a great experience, then they don’t deserve recognition.

But this also puts a huge responsibility on us to make sure our evaluations are tough, but fair…and consistent. This is where our internal quality controls have to shine. There will always be room for discussion on an evaluation and there could certainly be a spread of a few points difference between the different readings of a shop. But the shops should be consistent and the scores should always be justified.

We had done a few shops for this client that fell below this requirement. One shop was scored completely incorrectly, as if the evaluator had spilled coffee on the whole project and never leaned up the mess. Of course I apologized and will make sure corrective action is taken.

Even we are guilty of loosing a little focus. Our quality has always been strong and our scoring system relevant. So it is easy to understand that we felt everything is looking good and doing well…and presto, a few poorly done shops slipped through the system.

I would tell you that you are not immune from this, either. Just because you normally do things very well, doesn’t mean you should lose focus or reduce your vigilance.

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