How To Become A Mystery Shopper

In Robinson�s recently published book, The Richer Way, Julian Richer comments: "The mystery shopping surveys are a good tool ... but have to be done regularly to be useful. We have them every two weeks. It can be very sobering to read what an outsider thinks of your service."

"We see ourselves as business partners with our clients, as more like a team of consultants than many of the mystery shopping outfits. We have debriefing sessions where the client can sit in and know that how to become a mystery shopper, for example, and we exercise a lot of quality control, which is much more stringent than the industry standards."

Butterworth admits that it might cost more to pay for the traveling expenses of her locally-based teams than to pay for mystery shoppers living closer to the client's outlets, but she believes it is worth it. "The big market research firms have alerted clients to the merits of mystery shopping, but my type of company will benefit as clients become dissatisfied with a lack of quality control and start to look for a more focused approach."

One of Butterworth's clients, pub group Green alls Inns, is keen to use mystery shopping in a "much more creative" way. "We're beginning to track different usage occasions," says marketing controller Julie Brook. She also stresses the need for mystery shopping companies to be sensitive to the styles of a client's different outlets. "In our younger audience pubs, for example, we might prioritize music and atmospherics, but in our lunchtime pubs, for a very different crowd, it might be the food."

Should mystery shoppers name individual members of staff? No, says Jill Hillier at MSS. She thinks it is unnecessarily divisive and too negative. Yes, says Paul Harrison, managing director of Marketing Sciences, whose clients include oil companies, restaurant chains and betting shops. "Where a programme is well-designed and well-implemented, with consultation throughout, then our evidence is that the people at the coalface will see the benefits of what you are doing and won't resent the activity," he says.

Is new technology playing a significant role in mystery shopping? Most industry experts say the most important P ingredient for success remains well-trained mystery shoppers, but there do seem to be some high-tech inroads. David Robinson, MD of Richer Sounds says using mystery shopping specialist ABA allows him to look at customer care in greater detail.

Alan Holliday, managing director of BDI, which claims to be the mystery shopping market leader in the UK, says his company uses technology to offer a very fast delivery of reports - anything from 72 hours down to 24 hours. The field force telephone in their results to operators, who use a piece of computer software called IRIS. This allows them to enter the questionnaire results directly into a processing system. All of this was "a significant investment", says Holliday - perhaps L750,000 over the years. A further investment in Internet technology will allow BDI to provide its clients with even more up-to the-minute and online information.

But will clients be prepared to fork out for such a service? Bob Crowther, planning research manager at London Transport Buses, which has just begun its first-ever mystery shopping programme, thinks they will.

"Mystery shopping is expensive," he admits. "It's at the dear end of market research. But the cost-effectiveness is excellent. Electronic data capture is very useful to us because the faster we can get the data through our own system and out to our operators, the faster they can act on it."

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