Undercover shopping
Courier-News (Chicago Suburban Newspaper
Group)
By Mike Sullivan
Mystery evaluators: Retailers hire companies'
trained crew to rate their customer service
Some anonymous consumers who regularly enter retail stores do
so with no intention of buying a thing.
What they do, however, has a measurable effect on those who come
with a shopping list.
Mystery Shoppers, as the undercover per-diem workers are known,
enter shops and businesses, observe the demeanor of customer service
representatives and report their findings to the corporate entity
that hired them.
It's an industry that has experienced double-digit growth in
a year-over-year comparison.
More than 150 people representing the Mystery Shoppers Providers
Association will be honing their skills at the third annual educational
conference July 7-9, at Holiday Inn Select in Naperville.
John Swinburn, executive director of Dallas-based MSPA, says
some of the world's largest companies regard mystery shopping
as a valuable strategic tool.
The trained mystery shoppers anonymously evaluate restaurants,
hotels, retail stores and other companies.
He said his mystery shoppers, all independent contractors, do
not step into a retailer's shop behaving badly in order to provoke
a response from a sales clerk.
"They're actually given some guidelines on specific things to
observe and to record," Swinburn explained.
He acknowledged, however, that there are some situations that
mystery shoppers might be asked to document, such as "an interaction"
between a customer and a sales clerk in which there might be some
perceived difficulty, such as when an item is returned to a store
for a refund.
"Generally speaking, it's just to capture exactly what happened
in an objective fashion," Swinburn explained.
He said the main role of the mystery shopper is to determine
whether corporate policy is being effectively carried out at the
retail level.
Mystery shoppers, for example, may observe whether a sales clerk
greets customers with a smile within 30 seconds of the customer
entering the store, as dictated by corporate policy.
"If that doesn't happen, it is simply noted in the mystery shopper's
report," Swinburn stated.
Candidates for these positions, Swinburn said, are recruited
via the company's Web site, where corporate opportunities are
posted. He estimated the total number of mystery shoppers in North
America at about 1 million.
Mystery Shoppers, in general, are not highly compensated, according
to Swinburn. "It depends on the shop and the complexity (of the
assignment)," he explained.
Some mystery shoppers, he said, may end up with a meal at a fast-food
restaurant as compensation for their report on how sales transactions
are handled at the restaurant. Or the mystery shopper could receive
a $5 to $20 cash payment. "Generally speaking, it's certainly
low compensation," Swinburn said.
He cautioned potential mystery shoppers against responding to
Internet advertisements from scam artists who require candidates
pay a fee to receive job information.
"That information is readily available for free on our Web
site," www.mysteryshop.org
), Swinburn said.
The concept of the mystery shopper, Swinburn speculated, evolved
from retailers who wanted to evaluate whether they were experiencing
loss due to pilfering. "That was many years ago - possibly 50
or 60 years ago," he said.
Nowadays, employee dishonesty is handled by the retailer through
a private investigator and does not involve a mystery shopper,
Swinburn explained.
How mystery shoppers are recruited
Here is some information provided by the Mystery Shoppers Providers
Association about how to become a mystery shopper:
• Age: You must be at
least 21 years old.
• How to apply: Mystery
shoppers are recruited online by so-called "member companies"
that serve as human resources agencies, working with retailers
who use the trained shoppers to evaluate restaurants, hotels and
other companies. There is no fee.
• Pay: Member companies
set fees paid to mystery shoppers and spell out the sort of information
a retailer wants, i.e., whether a sales staff is courteous and
helpful. Jerry Gulyes, president of a member company in South
Carolina who also runs a satellite office in the Chicago suburbs,
says member companies - there are about 200 of them - work out
rates and standards with companies. "We take their particular
standards they are looking to have measured and we work that into
a format that is actually placed online," he explained.
• Job assignments: Member
companies go to a database of mystery shoppers to find one in
a given geographic area. "They could be housewives, college
students - people that we train specifically for the assignment,"
Gulyes said. When an assignment in completed, the mystery shopper
inputs the information at the member company's Web site. "We
edit it and send it on to the client," Gulyes explained.
Compensation, he said, is paid by the member company, not the
retailer. Member companies pay mystery shoppers after evaluating
their performance and generally cut a check for the mystery shopper
within 45 days.
