Lately, mystery shopper and customer research are becoming more popular as an effective mechanism of improving customer satisfaction especially in cases where the behaviour of a clerk or salesman is crucial for the image and the overall progress of the company.

Why?

The purpose of mystery research is that the following is monitored from the perspective of the customer or user:

• Compliance with law obligations in the practice of officials, clerks or sellers
• Compliance with internal rules - codes of ethics, rules, services...
• Kindness and professionalism of staff
• Knowledge and respect for procedures prescribed by the officials
• The adequacy of the work organization
• The adequacy of the workspace accessibility
• The adequacy of arrangement and atmosphere within the working space
• The effectiveness of training and education

Benefits for clients

Results of mystery shopper or customer research allow presentation of results per observation unit or as a summary of all the units in a municipality/city, region or country in order to provide recommendations for work correction on all these levels of observations.

If the research is being conducted in repeated waves, the results can be used:

• To compare and track changes
• As an objective criteria for rewarding and sanctioning officials, clerks or sellers
• As an internal mechanism of self-control when it comes to the work of clerks or sellers because they can assume that anyone can be a mystery shopper so they will try to obey the rules of service in all the cases in order to avoid possible sanctions

How?

Trained observers:

• Go to the place of service
• Act as a common user of a service according to predefined scenario
• Objectively report on the quality of the service rather than the work of an individual
• Make an objective record of all relevant aspects of the services and their observations according to pre-defined criteria

Data Collection - Mystery Shopper & Customer standards:

• Visits are performed by the team of trained interviewers
• Each interviewer/mystery shopper can do only one visit to the same unit of observation
• Each mystery shopper and customer receives written instructions or scenario
• Each mystery shopper and customer goes through briefing before visits
• Each mystery shopper and customer after his training understands the manner of implementation of scenarios and completing the questionnaire

Behaving in Mystery Shopper and Customer situation:

• Mystery Shopper and Customer has to strictly obey rules and instructions defined by visit scenario
• If the employee/seller ask questions, the mystery shopper and customer respond through the content which is predefined in the scenario. It is not allowed to give different information but the ones which are defined by scenario of visits