The writer shares the nuances of first hand feedback that a business can elicit through a decoy shopper
A friend of mine is an approved mystery shopper for a few agencies involved in market research and mystery shopping for getting feedback to businesses. Recently, he requested me to join him on a mystery shopping assignment. The client assigned to him was a shoe retailer having a chain of stores all over India under franchisee model. Although I knew theoretically what is mystery shopping and why it is used, I was getting firsthand experience about the activity in action, and hence readily agreed to accompany my friend on the assignment. The shopping experience was a normal one where we both behaved like any other customer, though remaining very observant and attentive to every conversation and action that took place within the store while we were shopping and took more than average time in this store, than we would have taken otherwise in shopping for shoes. Every minute detail was recorded and later noted down in the data fact sheet which my friend was required to upload to the company website as mystery shopping report. It’s not that we just did window shopping and came out with whatever information we wanted, but we did buy a pair of sports shoes and socks, the cost of which will be reimbursed to my friend by the company which had retained him for executing the mystery shopping assignment.
This was a different experience, because when we go for shopping without any other agenda, we are normally ignorant to the happenings around us or the finer behaviour of sales people, unless it happens to be something extraordinary. Whereas in this case, where we went as mystery shoppers, we deliberately were looking out for what we wanted – information about the store, the employees’ behaviour and other aspects within the store. We were evaluating the store and employees in action, and as such we were more observant, attentive and receptive to everything around.
Understanding Mystery Shopping:
As the word goes ‘mystery’, there is no mystery of any kind in Mystery Shopping, or it is not some unsolved, complicated or mysterious case of unexplained events happening. It is one of the better ways of getting first hand customer feedback or is a powerful market research tool to gather competitor information secretly executed by using a dummy shopper. Mystery Shopping is a process by which a person, who is having expertise in observation and data gathering, secretly visits the business under review as any other customer and gathers data, with the objective of measuring performance of different aspects pertaining to business, against set standards. A mystery shopper may evaluate the entire business as a whole, or specific areas such as quality of customer care and customer service delivery, employees’ performance, store policies and procedures, cleanliness, products and services performance etc., as per the requirement of business. Mystery shopping can be effectively used in any business organization where there is employee–customer interaction happening, such as in retail stores, shopping malls, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, gyms, spas, banks, car dealerships, cinema theatres etc.. It could be used by businesses to assess its own performance, as well as for competitor information gathering.
However, for mystery shopping to be effective the business organization wanting to commission this exercise should, first of all have ‘standards’ for various areas defined clearly which can be compared with, and these standards must have been clearly communicated to the employees time and again.
Businesses normally engage market research firms to perform mystery shopping work to ensure secrecy of the process. The agency assigns a shopper to execute the assignment, who visits the particular client’s business outlet as an ordinary shopper, interacts with employees, asks questions, shops like any other ordinary customer without disclosing his/her identity and secretly gathers all required information in the process. To be effective, a mystery shopper is expected to measure objective quality as experienced and not subjective perceptions of oneself. Hence agencies normally provide detailed briefing to a mystery shopper before the assignment is commissioned.
The mystery shopper is then required to prepare a report by filling in a form/questionnaire provided by the market research agency, based on shopping experience and information gathered, and submit it to the agency for further action. Upon approval of this report, the mystery shoppers get paid for the task and also for the purchases that they have done on this shopping trip up to a certain upper limit.
Benefits of mystery shopping:
Mystery shopping though is useful for single stores and business setups, it is more useful and beneficial for medium to large business organizations with multiple stores and chains, where getting first-hand and genuine feedback otherwise becomes difficult. Moreover, it is cost effective and has the flexibility of being implemented at multiple locations simultaneously without any hassle. If executed properly, mystery shopping offers many benefits. (a) It is very useful for competitor analysis whereby mystery shoppers are sent to competitor’s businesses as regular shoppers and information gathered on competitor brands and businesses. (b) It is useful for self-assessment, like checking for implementation of new policies and practices and customer care programs run by the business. (c) It is useful in employee’s performance evaluation for execution of policies, procedures and customer service based on their behaviour and actions with customers. (d) It provides neutral and fair opinions and feedback on areas of concern like point of sale, products and services, displays, customer care, cleanliness etc., from a customer’s perspective. Mystery shopping is useful to see if there is any difference between how a business desires to perform and how it actually performs in day to day work and dealings with customers.
Drawbacks of mystery shopping:
Mystery shopping is not without drawbacks. (a) The data collected is not extensive. It is the opinion of a single person with personal preferences and as such the information may be shallow. (b) The data speaks of only one person’s shopping behaviour and experiences and not of the masses. (c) The data is based on a single interaction and shopping experience and hence may be skewed. (d) Since there is only one person involved, there is a possibility of individual perceptual biases creeping in and as such validity of data may be questioned. There is also a myth associated with mystery shopping that only negative aspects are captured, like poor employee behaviour or employees doing something wrong and then employees are punished for this, leaving them demotivated. Moreover, the feeling of someone spying over them itself is very much demotivating.
However, if these minor issues are controlled and the exercise executed properly, then the benefits certainly outweigh drawbacks, making mystery shopping a useful tool for marketing research and self-assessment by businesses.
In conclusion, I would say that though mystery shopping gives first hand inputs on functioning of the business, it should not be considered as a replacement for customer satisfaction and engagement surveys.
When properly executed, mystery shopping can provide the business and its employees, only constructive feedback and information which helps them take corrective actions and get better at achieving their set goals. Thus using mystery shopping is certainly beneficial to businesses to improve their bottom line
The writer is a Founder Director, Saldots Academy; Corporate Trainer and Facilitator; Past Chairman, Goa Management Association. Email: pradeepsalgaonkar@gmail.com
