Mystery Shopper Service

You walk up the stairs and look over, your shoulder, but no one seems to be watching you. Into the foyer and everything appears as it should. People with purpose crossing from a to b, a receptionist perfectly poised, smiling readily while answering the phone.

There's no sign of any wigs or stilettos, painted faces, masks or trench coats, not a whiff of anything clandestine in fact.

Something must be wrong. Is this not a Mystery Shopper Service? A group of people dedicated to penetrating the consumer heartland in search of service ideals? Where are those disguised champions of the streets and stores?

Of course the Caltex mystery shopper ads, where one man dresses in a variety of disguises to investigate the service performance of unwitting forecourt staff, is far removed from reality.

In fact, probably the most mysterious aspect of mystery shopping is the shortage of information quantifying its use in the market place. There are said to be over 500 companies providing mystery shopping services in the US - which is an indication that it is widely used - but there is no dollar figure of the value of that research.

Mystery shopping is not new either. Jen Chamberlain, marketing director for the Mystery Shopping Providers Association in the US, says it has been used for over 40 years.

In New Zealand its history goes back at least as far as the '70s and, to date, 13 of the 15 Association of Market Research Organizations (AMRO) member companies offer some kind of mystery shopping service. That said, there are really only two major players specializing in mystery shopping in the local market.

One of those is Market Pulse, which entered the market in 1989 as a research company. It soon started filling a perceived gap in the mystery shopping area of the market place.

Wendy Palmer, one of the company's founding directors, believes the majority of larger companies with retail outlets now conducts mystery shopping campaigns but says it's not an activity restricted solely to big companies.

Fiona Hudson director of Cinta Research, a Hawkes Bay-based company, says her clients include a beauty therapy outlet and a trucking firm. Other examples are real estate agents, jewelry shops, fast food outlets, car sales yards, service stations and shopping malls. But what are these companies trying to learn through mystery shopping? Karen Gnomes Moore, an account representative with US mystery shopping firm Customer Perspectives, outlines five of the more common uses:

. Preparing for the competition;

. Monitoring the competition;

. Recognizing good employees;

. Recognition/incentive programs; and

. Training measurement.

Phil Prosser, group managing director for GAPbuster Asia Pacific and Europe - the other specialist mystery shopping firm in New Zealand - says mystery shopping is a specific form of feedback which helps companies establishes how effective their performance truly is in terms of delivery of their standards.

"It's actually a programme which is there not to capture information but to use information to create continuous improvement and in fact build the culture of the environment and enrich the best practices."

Mystery Shopping |