Mystery shopping is the practice of using trained shoppers to anonymously evaluate customer service, operations, employee integrity, merchandising and product quality. Mystery shopping has many names: secret shopping, mystery customers, spotters, anonymous audits, virtual customers, employee evaluations, performance audits, telephone checks.

Initially, mystery shopping was a technique used by private investigators to prevent employee theft - primarily at banks and retail stores. In the 40s, Wilmark coined the term “mystery shopping” and began using the method to evaluate customer service. In the 1970s and 80s, ShopnChek popularized mystery shopping by gaining extensive publicity. In the 90s, fueled by the Internet, the mystery shopping industry experienced rapid growth and acceptance. Into the 2000s, the creation of software packages such as SASSIE and Prophet have revolutionized the industry.

Whatever name you use, the reasons behind mystery shopping are numerous. When location, pricing and product assortment are no longer unique, service is often the key to success or failure. It costs 10 times more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. One unhappy customer will tell five other people of his bad experience. Research has shown that the reasons why customers leave a company are: 69% poor customer service; 13% poor product quality; 9% competition; 5% other; 3% move away; 1% die.

<B>How is mystery shopping done?</B>

Step 1: Setting objectives & goals; Step 2: Program & questionnaire design; Step 3: Defining & recruiting shoppers; Step 4: Data collection; Step 5: Data preparation; Step 6: Reporting;

Step 7: Review findings and repeat steps 3-7.

<B>How to make the most of mystery shopping?</B>

Share the evaluation form with employees and management before initiation - get their input on the questionnaire; evaluate only things that can be changed; use binary questions (yes/no) as much as possible; use open-ended questions to explain special circumstances; use category summaries to easily identify key areas; phone, greeting, service, demonstration, facility, etc; use a point/scoring system for benchmarking and tracking trends.

Mystery shopping is a “cousin” to marketing research; it is typically more operational in nature than marketing research and is most often used for training and incentive purposes; marketing research involves determining real customer and prospect opinions, perceptions, needs, and wants; mystery shopping fills in a gap of information between operations and marketing. I hope there is no mystery in mystery shopping for any of you. So let’s check what our mystery shoppers have found.

<B>STAR OF THE WEEK</B>

The star goes to Clency of TecMau services, a company based at Mecom building in GRNW selling photocopy, fax machines and cash registers. I phoned them as I could not configure my Canon fax machine purchased from another supplier. Though he was not liable to give a service, he came and set it up for me free of charge the same day. He noted that I did not have a photocopy machine and spare cartridges for my fax machine. For such a 5-star service, I have become their advocate, will stick to them and recommend them to acquaintances. This is what I call building rapport.

<B>CABBAGE OF THE WEEK</B>

Courts Mauritius: Have you heard the Courts advert “Come and get it”; it should be changed to “Come and forget it”. I am shocked by their dismal level of service; in Riche Terre around 17:00, most staff were more keen on packing up than serving customers. It all started at Trianon where I decided to buy a set of table and chairs and the salesman told me they were not available and I would have to wait 6 weeks. Same story at Plaine Lauzun and when I told the gentleman from Courts Riche Terre there was no mention the set was out of stock, he sheepishly stated that we ‘do it verbally’. Courts sells dreams or, shall I say, nightmares?

<B>by Aisha Allee Mosaheb</B>

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