How To Act Like A Regular Customer and Get Away With It

Remember that, as a mystery shopper, you are playing the part of a customer going to a store to purchase, or possibly purchase, the best product to fulfill your need. Done properly, no one will suspect you. Here are a few tips on how to act like a regular customer:

• This is no reason to be nervous or divulge any more information aside than what you need to or what your guidelines instruct you to.
• Let the employee lead the conversation, and make sure you let the employee answer your questions.
• Only answer questions pertaining to the need you went in with. Chances are that the employee answers these questions on such a regular basis that the nature of your inquiry is so routine that they’ll have no idea who you are.
• Remember you are simply there to observe the result of your needs, inquires, answers and solutions presented in the form of the company’s products, which are there to answer them.

While the mystery shopping company may actually have a laundry list of reporting requirements, the best mystery shoppers can walk in to a store, appear as a customer with a need or problem, and take note of all important reporting criteria while pretending to simply go about his or her business. Once you return to your vehicle, you can take the time to record all the important times and other data you’ll need to accurately complete your report.

Whats Next? It's Time To Diversify

As with any well-run business establishment, diversification should be done once you have established some basic experience in the field. Many independent professionals such as writers, lawyers, professors and consultants simply don’t stick to their field – they use their qualifications to work in others. To assure steady income and better paying assignments, so should you. Mystery shoppers can get into related areas of freelancing such as merchandising, price audits, market research, focus groups and in store demos. Your experience as a mystery shopper will prepare you for these in terms of what you have already observed. Let us explore some of these options.

Merchandising –

Unlike mystery shopping, you will be identifying yourself. Your job will be to check which items are under or overstocked so as to order and stop ordering them accordingly. You will check both pricing and display of stocked items.

Pricing Audits –

Like a mystery shopper, you will not be identifying yourself, and be conducting your business without anyone’s awareness. Price audits are commissioned by competitors to see what the competition is selling their items for and how they are being sold. You will record this information discretely.

Pointers For Obtaining Assignments

Filling in for someone who flaked out, so to speak, will always put you in the good graces of the scheduler who previously thought they’d lost a client over it. As with any company, saving the account is an excellent way to prove you’re worthy of more work.

While most mystery shops are no longer scheduled by telephone, it should be taken as an opportunity to be flexible. Chances are that if you’re being called, it is last minute, and they need someone right away. This should be seen as an excellent opportunity to get within the good graces of the scheduler.

Gold and Silver MSPA certification also shows you’re a capable and reliable person a scheduler of secret shops can assign work with confidence. Certification is a guarantee that you can be observant, you are committed, and you are likely to perform the job competently. To learn more about certification, visit www.mspa.org

When you are contacted via telephone, email or bulletin board, respond and accept immediately. Any amount of time longer than 24 hours virtually guarantees you will be overlooked, and another applicant will be selected for what could have been your assignment.

Being reliable and thorough will move you up on the list of people looking for secret shops. Simply completing the assignments you receive on time and within the guidelines provided will demonstrate your seriousness to the company.

Why Mystery Shopping is Effective

Retail establishments heavily invest in mystery shopping. The customer experience they create (or the lack of one) dictates whether a company will succeed or fail. While a store manager can check in on his operation, it can sometimes be quite difficult to know exactly what takes place while the manager isn’t looking. Your job will be to observe exactly what goes on and report staff behavior in detail; however, your primary job is to help clients serve their own customers better.

Some are simply looking to see how their stores are kept. Others are looking to gauge service, product quality, employee appearance and product knowledge, for example:

• Were staff members knowledgeable about products and procedures?
• Did staff seem to have the best interest of the customer at heart?
• Did you receive considerate and courteous service?
• Did staff demonstrate genuine friendliness and a positive attitude?
• Did you have an overall sense that this business respected you as a customer?

As an investment to guarantee future work, you should always provide as much detail as possible. This detail will include what employees you interacted with, what they wore, how much they knew, how your needs were addressed and the cleanliness of the establishment.

One caution: Contrary to popular belief, mystery shopping is not simply a way for store managers to ‘spy’ on employees. On the contrary, stores interested in improving the customer experience are as interested in what they are doing right as what they might be doing wrong. The majority of retailers have a rewards system in place when frontline staff is ‘caught’ doing the right thing, because smart retailers know that positive reinforcement is the key to a happy productive workforce.

Points To Remember When Looking For The Best Work Available

For many, shopping is fun, necessary, and occasionally, both. Being a good mystery shopper involves not only finding work, but finding the best work. The process involves research that will target reputable firms, reliable records of accomplishment and the highest professional standards possible. You will be required to draw upon the greatest degree of thoroughness, observation and professionalism to the very best of your ability.

Opportunities to work as a mystery shopper are numerous, however no real opportunity will charge you a fee in order to perform the work. After all, your services will enable future clients to make money, so there is no reason why any reputable company would want to charge you a fee.

You will also notice that there are vast resources to draw upon for information. This information includes what qualifications you’ll need, where opportunities to find work are located and where to go for networking opportunities. The Mystery Shopping Providers Association and the National Center of Professional Mystery Shoppers are just two examples.