Mystery shopping helps businesses assess their customer experience at their establishment and can increase both productivity and identify signs of dishonesty.
Although mystery shoppers are not generally thought of as undercover detectives, this is essentially what they are and why our experienced private investigators are the best choice!
Who Might Need Mystery Shopping?
Business owners often need reliable insights into how their company is perceived and if standards are being properly upheld across locations. Mystery shopping provides undercover evaluations of service quality, cleanliness, brand standards, employee performance, and more.
Common situations where mystery shopping can help include:
> Evaluating employee service, professionalism, and compliance with protocols
> Auditing stores/branches to ensure company standards in operations, branding etc. are consistent
> Providing unbiased customer perspectives to motivate staff and refine policies
> Comparing service levels and practices to competitors
> Investigating employee theft, fraud, or other internal loss concerns
Mystery shopping typically involves trained evaluators anonymously posing as customers to objectively experience and assess business operations. The insights help identify areas for improvement.
How Does Mystery Shopping Work?
Our undercover mystery shoppers thoroughly evaluate your business by experiencing it as regular customers would. Shoppers act completely anonymously with observations focused on areas you specify, such as:
> Service quality and friendliness
> Staff product knowledge
> Wait times
> Branding and displays
> Cleanliness and atmosphere
> Following of protocols
> Upselling effectiveness
> Handling of complaints or issues
> Checkout processes
After the anonymous visit, the mystery shopper completes a custom evaluation form designed around your goals. The in-depth report summarises their experience with observations, photos, commentary, and scoring in key areas. Managers gain unbiased insights to refine operations.
For internal loss concerns, mystery shoppers can also assess theft vulnerabilities or discretely plant trackable items to catch culprits. We gather solid evidence if fraud is uncovered.
Why Trust Global Investigations for Mystery Shopping?
With over 25 years of investigative expertise, our team brings skillsets perfectly suited for undercover mystery shopping audits. Our evaluators are highly observant to even subtle details and excel at objective analysis.
We match shoppers to assignments based on relevant backgrounds, ensuring credible performances that blend seamlessly into the customer setting. Shoppers are trained to provide quality assured, legally obtained evidence that gives managers reliable insights into company-wide consistency and performance.
Mystery Shopping Results & Analysis
Our mystery shopping reports deliver more than just observational findings. We analyse results across locations to identify performance gaps, emerging issues, and root causes. Our insights include:
> Scored ratings in key assessment criteria for easy benchmarking
> Comparative gap analysis between stores/regions
> Mapping service quality to customer satisfaction and sales
> Correlations between practices and performance metrics
> Custom visual dashboards and dynamic reporting
This high-level perspective allows executives to pinpoint priorities for improving operations, service, and profitability company-wide.
Ongoing Mystery Shopping Programs
One-off audits provide a snapshot, but consistent mystery shopping uncovers trends over time. Our ongoing programs feature:
> Recurring monthly/quarterly evaluations
> Flexible shopper assignment for neutrality
> Custom reporting with historical comparisons
> Analysis of performance trajectories
> Insights into impacts from changes
> Early warning of developing issues
Robust analytics evidence the ROI of investments to enhance service and operations. We partner with you to achieve your strategic goals.
Mystery Shopping FAQs
A mystery shopper is a trained, objective evaluator paid to anonymously experience a business’ customer service, purchasing process, and operational standards as an ordinary customer would. They report back unbiased insights.
Mystery shoppers assess areas specified by the client such as service friendliness, wait times, branding, cleanliness, following of protocols, product knowledge, and handling of any issues. The goal is an outside-in perspective.
Our mystery shoppers undergo roleplaying, evaluation best practices, observational skills building, reporting standards alignment, and more evidence capture training. Shoppers are skilled in professional stealth evaluations.
Clients receive an overview report summarising findings, photos, commentary, scoring in key assessment criteria, analysis of gaps and correlations, recommendations and custom visual reporting dashboards.
For theft concerns, shoppers assess vulnerabilities, plant trackable items, and gather video/photographic evidence if a planted item gets stolen. This builds an irrefutable case to eliminate internal fraud.