Secret Mystery Shopping – More than Point of Sale Evaluation

A company thinking of employing the services of a mystery shopper may well not be aware of the long term benefits that can be gained by operating a long term campaign.
Secret Mystery Shopping can obviously tell the client company many things about its initial point of sale performance but this is far from the whole picture.
Upon entering a store or retail establishment the individual undertaking the secret mystery shopping assignment can be briefed to gather other data, such as the cleanliness of the window display or the state of the retail outlets which flank the target store. There are a myriad of factors than can affect sales performance even before the customer has entered the shop and a mystery shopper can gather this data as part of their assignment. Any actions you take to correct problems in this pre-store sales phase can then be re-evaluated further into the secret mystery shopping campaign.
By carrying out a continuing campaign you will be able to judge the effectiveness of any changes you make, evaluate if business critical decisions have had a positive or negative effect to the shopping experience and build an overall performance picture of the store in question. Seasonal trends can be analysed and action taken to resolve any performance issues that occur during certain times of the year or during certain holidays. Valuable performance data can be gathered on everything from your cleaner to your management staff, the main benefit being that it would be completely independent as it was gathered by a third party not associated with the company.
Secret mystery shopping is the art of examining your own business through the eyes of an impartial observer, an observer that you can control and direct at will to focus upon any part of your retail establishment or store. The information that can be gleaned through their eyes will be pure and unbiased, unlike a report from one of your own staff, you would never have to worry about personal interest interfering with the integrity of the information you are provided.
Running a long term campaign gives you the ability to witness your company's performance over time and more importantly judge the effectiveness of any changes you make by intelligently interrogating the data provided by a secret mystery shopping campaign.

Find out more about mystery shopping at
The Shadow Shopper.

This article was written by Mac T. Wheeler, you can find out more about him over at
My Sabai - Freelance and Technology Blog.