Mystery Shopping Online

What about the quality of the mystery shopping online, the people in the field who do the actual assessment? The long-running debate between informed “professional and authentic' amateur assessors rages on. NOP prefers to use the latter - with a very basic training in memory retention and recall techniques�. So does electrical goods giant Dixon’s, whose spokeswoman emphasizes that mystery shoppers must not have worked in retail previously. They must be typical customers.

But other mystery shopping specialists, especially in the US, opt for full-time staff. Manchester-based ABA Quality Monitoring, although specializing in the pub industry, recently took on hi-fi retailer Richer Sounds, using small teams of people on a very regular basis.

The people employed all need to have some customer-service experience so they understand what's happening on the other side of the counter,' says ABA director Kate Butterworth.

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, 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 Greenalls 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 ingredient for success remains well-trained mystery shoppers, but there do seem to be some high-tech inroads.

Mystery Shopping |