Mystery Shopping - An upcoming career for Shopaholics!
Mystery Shopping - An upcoming career for Shopaholics!
1. What is Mystery Shopping?
Mystery shopping is a way used by retailers now-a-days to gather information from individual outlets. Mystery shoppers look into their company’s employees’ customer service and sales skills. Companies main motive to hire mystery shoppers is to find out that the employees are providing correct information about the company's products and services. Through this retailers try to ensure that every customer gets an excellent shopping experience.
Mystery shopping is being used by many organizations theses days to evaluate the in-store service standard and improve the quality simultaneously. Companies create a group of mystery shoppers and train them so that they can work across various product categories. This helps in improving the overall customer services as it is related to increasing profitability with repeat business. Repeat sales help in saving a lot of money on advertising and promotion, costs related to attracting new customers.
Mystery shopping is an effective step against negative behavior that affects the brand image and profitability. Mystery shoppers generally operate in cities like Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata and some other major cities across the country.
2. Why do companies hire mystery shoppers?
• Getting Accurate Customer Insight (ACI)
• Improvement in Customer Delight & Satisfaction Index (CDSI)
• Introduction to new customers
• Increase in sales
• Identifying loopholes in management
• Maintain consistency in different brands
• Monitoring service performance
• Providing feedback from front line operations
• Checking product/service delivery quality.
• Reducing Customer Complaints
3. Who can become a mystery shopper?
Mystery shopping assignments can be through a telephone call, email, letter, website survey, face to face visits or home visits, etc. If you are a shopaholic and if you love exploring different places then you can become a perfect mystery shopper.
Eligibility of getting into this profession are listed out below-
• You must have a good memory, observation and writing skills.
• You must be fully dedicated and must have an ability to work under tight deadlines.
• You have to be enthusiastic and reliable.
• No minimum age requirement but for under 18 age group, companies require an agreement from parents or the guardian.
• There is no formal qualification required but you must be able to read, write and speak in English effectively.
• You must have regular access to a computer and Internet.
Mystery shopping profile does not require special training as you have to only submit your personal and contact information to the company. Also you have to look out for the areas or shops that is of your interest and fits your profile.
Some of the organizations provide certification programs to their shoppers before they take up any assignment. These certification programs are specific to several hiring companies and are for the shoppers, so that they can understand the company’s guidelines before working as mystery shoppers.
4. What kind of companies hire mystery shoppers?
There are different areas where mystery shoppers are hired. They are listed out below.
•Restaurants- For restaurants, mystery shoppers are hired to have a good quality check and quick service for take away, fine dining, bars, nightclubs, drive in, coffee shops, home delivery, etc.
•Retail- For retail stores mystery shoppers are hired to find out shoppers' behavior and brand loyalty. It also helps in increasing the growth of the brand as retail industries are benefited the most by mystery shopping activity.
•Banking/Insurance and financial services- In case of financial services mystery shoppers keep an eye on the type of employees the organization has. They deal with different age groups so they have to remain extra cautious about the quality and friendliness of their service.
•Automobiles- Mystery shoppers keep an eye on the automotive technicians. They check whether the technicians are providing relevant information to their customers and an average person who does not know about the technicalities of automobiles does not get cheated.
• Multiplexes- Mystery shoppers are hired for multiplexes to check what trailers are being shown, to ensure that the theater staff is efficient, friendly and organized, to ensure that kids are not permitted in adult-rated movies, statutory warnings regarding health hazards are shown in the theater and many more such concerns.
• Hospitality- In the hospitality industry, customer experience is the only thing that matters. So mystery shoppers give answers to queries that customers have about the hospitality industry. The evaluation team working at hotels, spas, resorts, clubs and pubs analyses these answers and takes required steps.
